The Prince of Weeds
by C.T.II
Summary: Theodore embarks on a quest to save Eleanor when The Chipmunks,The Chipettes,their parents,and I.T.O. are transported to the Chipmunk ancestral home in time for war in the final installment of the I.T.O. trilogy.
1. Default Chapter

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Prologue

The seed that had been tumbling for what could have been centuries, picked up speed as it was snared by the gravitational allure of a nearby double-mooned world.

It couldn't see the celestial wonders in its slow passage through the galaxy. It had no ears to hear the super-heated air screech and ram around its genetically enhanced hull as it shot through the cerulean sky of its new home.

It hadn't yet understood before its approaching implantation, that a flaw, a physical weakness in the seed's hull, caused it to splinter in the heat of atmospheric friction. A small, glowing section of itself cracked and flew away in a supersonic course deviation whose terminus was towards the vast seas.

Below, in the vastness of the world's continental forests, animals perceptive enough to notice, evaded to the best of their skill, as they began to hear the sudden, loud whistle of a living, football-shaped projectile streak to the lush ground.

It was over in a moment. Trees within the seed's flight path were now sporting smoldering, broken stumps were their branches brushed against the white-hot kernel. Lush grass and fertile earth was furrowed into a scorching trench that terminated into a small crater in a clearing neighboring a wide river.

Half-buried in the hole it made for itself, the seed, within a few minutes, split its casing and issued out a feathery tendril to the air. With that tendril, it sensed, sniffed, tasted and analyzed the world around it by the biochemical picture it painted. Nothing was omitted, everything was crucial.

So efficient was the seed's ability to learn of its environment that within the hour, it had sampled close to a mile of its new territory. All of the information was chemically encoded into the seed's DNA, immediately giving it superior adaptability. Soon it would grow, flourish and begin the real work.

The tendril arced back, but instead of retracting back into the seed hull, it began to insert itself into the yielding soil. Then it gradually started dragging the rest of the seed deeper into the earth until it was out of sight, save only the still hot trail of its landing.

Within the span of the following month, every animal in the vicinity witnessed the titanic and unearthly swift growth of a tree that was once a mere seed before and now had uprooted nearby smaller trees that measured several hundred meters themselves. Its girth rivaled the width of a small town and was still growing steadily. The clearing where it had germinated was now a tiny, anonymous patch of turf completely covered by the massive root system of The Super Tree.

With a world so abuzz with life, the tree had been busy during its development, both physically and consciously, cataloguing as much as possible the myriad forms of both flora and fauna. However, it had also discovered that for every increase of its growth, its ability to extend the range of its airborne chemical absorption analysis had been hindered. At present, it could read a little less than half the length of the continent. Under favorable conditions, it would have already done half of the planet's northern hemisphere. 

It was the flaw, there was no doubt. The broken piece of itself that now meant so much, was gone and its absence threatened the designed mission. It needed to improvise. It needed...assistance.

Something began to stir in its powerful, cellular brain. It recalled the animals that now lived and capered in its vast canopy and boughs. One, in particular. A small species of arboreal mammals whose audacity and curiosity belied its size. At the moment, they lived near the ground, oblivious to the intelligence and intent of their host.

The titanic tree had learned about the animal's physiology long before then and now it was gradually manipulating and reshuffling its genetic makeup to produce a red, enticing fruit from its branches that hung heavy with ripeness in time. With a subtle scent attractant keyed to the target animal, they would be devoured readily when they swelled and fell to the ground.

Although incapable of showing it, the alien tree was pleased of the work it accomplished. Yes, audacity and curiosity would become very useful in the centuries ahead.

And as the first of the mammals stuffed the sweet fruit into their ample cheek pouches and bolted for their dens in the surrounding woods, the tree couldn't help but wonder how this would have affected _their _lives in the coming years, as well.

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Chapter One

The Bulgravian Royal Palace sat away from the city and its blend of both traditional and cosmopolitan citizens, though its presence in the Eastern European countryside still gave people the feeling that it and those who lived in its halls still looked after them with civic fealty even in this day and age.

It was the physical symbol of the Bulgravian citizenry, wide, vast and gray with ancient stone. It withstood insurrections, survived burnings, defended against medieval invaders and Nazi looters. It held up to political intrigues and assassinations, secret betrayals and even more overt reprisals. Now it provided, for Augustus Rudi, the current king, lodging and comfort for his friend and erstwhile American college roommate, David Seville, his sons, The Chipmunks and his friends, Miss Miller and her daughters, The Chipettes.

When it was learned that the last stop of their Vagabond Heroes Tour would be in the Bulgravian capital, Kind Rudi and Queen Stahlia insisted that their guests be made welcome in their home, as they had been when the two of them visited The Sevilles while on business in America several years back.

The high, delicate window of one of the lesser used salons of the East Wing of the immense palace, framed Theodore and Eleanor and gilded their bodies in soft sunlight as they moved their chess pieces with deliberation.

Their betraying eyes would slide from their pieces, to the window and its view and vista, to each other,(often to each other), and quickly back to the game at hand.

Eleanor glanced up cautiously and tried to favor him a disarming smile that in her discomfort, came out thin. "You know, a girl could get the impression that you're avoiding her," she quipped weakly. "Rook to Pawn Three."

Theodore answered with a glance back to her that was both annoyed and apologetic. "I said I was sorry, Ellie. That interviewer caught me off-guard with that question about you and me. Bishop takes Pawn."

"It wasn't like it was earth-shattering or anything. She just wanted to know how long we knew each other."

"It looked like there was more to it than that," he said under his breath.

The blonde girl pondered that for a moment. That particular question was well-disguised, but also quite loaded. While she might have been comfortable enough with the question to answer, Theodore seemed slightly shaken and more at odds before he blurted out his clumsily diplomatic one. She wished she could have been blamed on the stress of the tour.

"I know," she said. "But maybe if you weren't so afraid of us, you might have handled it better. Knight to Bishop."

"Us?"

"Us. Our relationship."

__

'Uh, oh,' he thought. _'This again.'_

With a stomach tightening more than it looked, he defended himself. "I'm...not afraid. Rook takes Pawn, er, Knight. I'm just, uh...I don't want to...rush things, y'know?"

At that, Eleanor looked him in the eyes and dropped both her concentration and decorum. "Rush what? We've known each other forever. Don't you want to take it further? I do."

Theodore felt backed into a corner by her urgency. It sounded more like a plea than a question. It was during those moments that he'd forget about the changing complexities of having a girlfriend and it would cost him. Sidestepping questions and an approximation of rationale wouldn't work on Eleanor now, but he fell into its comfortable habit and proceeded anyway.

"I guess, but can it wait until we get back home?" he reasoned. "This is our last stop on tour and we really need to be focused." Then a thought hit him."Besides, I thought you liked me already because I was nice."

Eleanor suddenly looked hesitant, as if she was about to think of something specific to say, then aborted. Her expression, which had a shade of hope, grayed into a look of solemn disappointment.

She stood, her hand still on one of her pieces, and said with sad imperative, "Sometimes, nice just isn't enough, Theodore. Queen takes Rook."

For Theodore, it was more preferable to concentrate on the lessons Simon and David taught him about chess, then it was to wrap his mind around this particular problem that he _could_ solve, but the child within him forbade. 

"Pawn takes Queen," he said with strained confidence. "Mate, Ellie."

"Probably not," she muttered aloud. Then she left.

Arthur Duval dutifully paid his respects at the foot of the three graves. A light drizzle mystified the somber woodlands, glistening the bark and leaves of every tree throughout and refreshing him with wet, cool breezes. He ignored it.

It was ritual by now. The poignancy of its meaning was still fresh in him, but he knew that it wouldn't solve his questions about their deaths any more now than it did in the beginning.

With the graves adorned with flowers, a rose for both brothers and a wreath of honeysuckle for his mother, he stepped back in introspection.

"I wish your older brothers were still alive," his father, Phillip, mysteriously said from behind him. "This position is too much for you, Arthur."

"Failure can be very liberating, Father," Arthur answered calmly without looking back. "You should try it sometime."

Phillip walked over to his son's side to see what he had done with the graves. With his family, simple beauty worked best for Arthur. Simple flowers, the currency for the preservation of his fond memories and their honor.

"I did. When I was young like you and could afford the luxury of others to help me because of my youth. The death of our family was the result of the last mistake I made. Ever," said his father quietly.

"The coroner ruled it a murder/suicide due to depression," Arthur replied. "She couldn't handle the life of being a member of I,T.O.."

Phillip turned to stone. "Couldn't or didn't want to. My mistake was in deducing her unhappiness too late. I worked too hard and in the end, she took away my sons and herself without a word to me."

Arthur just starred ahead at the vista of tombstone salted hills and promptly ignored the obvious inferno of pain Phillip was enduring inside. "But why worry?" he asked conversationally, though he couldn't hide the mocking tones. "About future leadership, I mean. My failure with The Predictor and the disaster in Venice has already made me and outcast in your eyes."

That earned an almost shocked glance from his father to him. No matter the setbacks, he was his son. "I want you to apply yourself more. You were not born to be mediocre. I want you to be a male among males. Not just for our cause, but for yourself." 

Arthur didn't listen. The recent past was playing in his eyes and had his full attention. The crashing failure and the black betrayal that begat it. For one of his rare moments, he looked sad.

"But you _know_ it's lost on me, right? I couldn't even find the girl I love in all of that commotion and miscommunication in Italy, and I daresay she might have had a hand in thwarting me again, or at least slowing me down." He turned to Phillip. "Which lead us to The Roaming Eyes, those interdepartmental watchdogs you prize so."

"What of them?"

"They're the vipers we hold to our breast, Father, yet you give them so much latitude."

Phillip sighed. It was a subject they've had words with before and again he would be patient with his remaining offspring.

"They need to have that. They're called The _Roaming Eyes _for a reason. They monitor and report on all field activities."

" And they answer only to you," Arthur finished for him. "I tell you, they are after me for some reason."

"Don't be paranoid. They're doing their job and if that entails reporting on your occasional blunder, then I'm all for it, for the welfare of the organization."

Inside, Arthur fumed. Once again, the watchdogs were protected by their master, while the son is ridiculed for his worry. "Who watches the watchmen, Father? But if you love them so much, why not give them Field Executive status and revoke mine? They're much more capable than I am!" he exploded.

"Because my Meredith didn't give birth to The Roaming Eyes!" Phillip lashed back with a fire he normally kept in check. If this would shatter Arthur's seeming self-pity, then so be it. "She bore _heirs_! Now act like one! End sim!"

The world dissolved away in glowing pixel deresolution, replaced by a stark white room with a single control panel set in a nearby wall. With the change in setting, Phillip calmed.

"The Roaming Eyes are not your concern, Arthur. Concentrate on what's at hand. I have sent the bulk of two Holds to assist us on this and the location of The Green Gate has been verified. That's why we're assembled here in Bulgravia." He turned to leave through the aperture that formed from one of the otherwise featureless walls.

"Ready yourself and rendezvous with me later so we can arrive at The Gate. If all goes well, Humanity will fall in our lifetime."

Arthur said nothing as his father departed. 


	2. Chapter Two

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Chapter Two

"Give him a chance.He'll come around,"Brittany said, lying back on the sofa in The Chipettes' dressing room and sipping a mineral water.

Eleanor stared forlornly at the large,lit mirror while she spoke,as though she were talking to her reflection.But she addressed her oldest sister,regardless."It's not chance,but choice.There's nothing really tying us together.We're not engaged or anything,we're not even going steady.I'm crazy about Theodore and I want this to work out for us,but..."

"But,what?"

"But...But I...I won't wait for him,not forever.I can't."

Eleanor knew she would stand by her decision,despite the wrenching in her heart at merely saying it.Leaving Theodore for someone else,even if it was because of his indecision,was,like killing someone,possible,but she didn't want to do it."He's got to show more initiative,"she went on."He's got to _want_ to be closer,too,or else why are we together now?"She found herself overwrought and tried to calm herself down."Love really hurts,sometimes,"she sighed.

"Yeah,but you know how he is,"Brittany reminded.

"Yeah.Oooh,that Theodore!"Eleanor started again."One minute,I just want to hold him like he's my own personal Teddy Bear,and the next,I want to give him my own personal recipe for a knuckle sandwich.He drives me crazy,sometimes."

"I know he's a little clueless,"Jeanette advised from the other side of the room,listening to Simon and Alvin tuning their guitars through the closed door."But you can't say he doesn't have a good heart,Ellie.Deep down,he wants the same thing,too.He probably just doesn't want to hurt you.He's really thinking about you."

Eleanor thought about that.Jeanette's wisdom often eclipsed her intelligence,and as sisters,her council was rarely taken with a grain of salt by Eleanor.So she wondered if,indeed,she may have been too forceful with Theodore's feelings,too aggressive.

"Great,"she muttered."Now I feel like a First-class heel."

"No!"Jeanette tried to placate,not wanting anyone to feel guilty."Sorry,I just-"

"No,"the blonde said quietly,turning around to face them."That's alright,you guys.You're probably right.Maybe it's just not our time yet."Then she got up and went to the door."I'll see you later."

"Where are you going?"Jeanette asked from beside her.

"For a walk.To clear my head."

"Okay,"Brittany called out."But don't forget.Soundcheck."

"Yeah,okay,"Eleanor assured,not bothering to hide her depression.Then she departed.

Brittany and Jeanette just look uncomfortable and worryingly at each other.Boy trouble always seemed a dicey subject to tackle nowadays.Especially as they were getting older.Hormones,peer pressure and,in their case,some surfacing instincts,only promised more rocky roads and surprises to come.

The young Human woman in the pea-green dress strode with some uncertainty through one of the Gothic doorways that led to one of the rosebush-walled paths that ended in the palace's courtyard.

In the courtyard's distant center,was a tall marble fountain,flowing water up in prancing,high arcs,like joyous horses.And sitting along the edge,basking in the cool mist it gave,was Theodore.

He had his eyes closed and was tapping in a fast,complex rhythm with his drumsticks.He lost himself in the rapid-fire staccato he was no doubt practicing,but what marveled his audience of one was the practiced speed of the taps on the marble rim.Not the clumsy hammerings of an amateur,his precise control and timing allowed for him to virtually tattoo his beats with the tips of the sticks in an incredibly soft and impressively swift _tippity-tap_ sound.

She decided to approach,but quietly,so as not to disturb him,watching the sticks blur to an arm strength that belied his build.

Sitting a few feet from him,she cleared her throat and spoke."I'm sorry to bother you."

The sound broke him from his rhythm trance and he swiveled his green eyes for the source as he became more aware.He saw her seconds later and apologized.

"I didn't meant to disturb you,"she went again."I'm part of the entertainment that's performing here.It's too late to call my agent now and I don't know where my room is.Since I've noticed you around here,I thought you could help me."

"Hmm?Oh,uh,you're probably staying with the others and me."Theodore said."That's here on this side of the palace.You don't have far to walk,ma'am."

The woman brightened at that."Well,thank you very much,young man."Then she reached into and fumbled around in her purse for something."I was going to get in some practice later,but maybe now's as good a time as any,"she said jovially.

Theodore glanced over at her,his own desire to practice,gone.He was silently curious as to what kind of practice she would engage in.It also didn't occur to him until now to figure out who she might be.

She was a stranger,that much was obvious,but her presence and stately beauty didn't put him on alert.In fact,it was the opposite,so he felt oddly,if not pleasantly,at ease.

"I'm not dangerous,Theodore Seville,"she said,smiling.

"Oh,okay."

Then he froze."How do you know my name?"Caution kicked in his stomach,at last,and he started regretting talking to her,even if his upbringing and nature demanded he do so.Then an answer clicked and he relaxed inside.'_Now I know how she knows me,'_he thought,thankfully.'_She's a-_'

"Nope.I'm not a fan,"the woman admitted,still smiling.

Theodore looked stressed."Who are you?"he asked with as much iron as he could generate.

"Well,I'm a mentalist and a Tarot card reader by trade,"the woman said with a flourish of hair tossing."But even I get a little rusty,sometimes,so I keep in practice.Do you mind?"

"Uh,no,ma'am.Not at all.You can if you want to,"the Chipmunk nervously offered.Then he asked,"You can read minds,can't you?"

"Oh,a little,"she replied nonchalantly."Don't worry.I won't bite.By the way,when was the last time you've eaten.You look a little pale.Or does your fur always look that light?"

Theodore glanced away slightly,as if to ward off her probings."Just a lot on my mind,that's all."

"Yes,"she answered with a vacant,distant look in her eyes."I'm beginning to see."

Theodore decided it was enough.She was a nice enough person,but his thoughts were his own,no matter how troubled.He didn't feel like getting up and moving away,so he tried something else.

He filled his mind's eye with an image,a closed door.And when that didn't satisfy his desire for privacy,he gradually conjured up and iron one,laced with heavy chain.But the thoughts were beginning to waver when other thoughts began to enter his mind from the edges.

"How long have you-"the woman was about to ask,when a singular image,overwhelming and sudden,caught her attention."A door?A...gate?No,it's..."The ghostly visage of a blonde girl wavered in front of the mental barrier.Disappearing and then reappearing more clearly."Elise?"she vacantly pursued."Elaine...Ellen...Eleanore...Eleanor."

Theodore relaxed his body and released the barrier he hastily threw up,now that it failed to keep her out."Please,ma'am.Don't pry,"he said quietly."I don't want to sound mean,but you're being awfully rude."

The woman ignored him."You feel love for her.She's holding out her hand,reaching out for you,but she doesn't seem to be getting closer."She came out of her trance and regarded him."Your girlfriend?"

"Yeah,"he answered downcast and not understanding why he answered.

"Not sure?"she asked softly.

"Oh,I'm sure,"he said quickly,as the fear of him _not_ being sure suddenly struck him fast."I just...don't know for how long."

"What do you mean?"

In the back of his mind,Theodore kept half-asking himself why he was telling her all of this.He had always been a bit shy,but also,he could be open when he acquired the trust of someone,sometimes.Right now,he felt a need to tell.He just didn't know whether it was because she was somehow making him or if he really wanted to get this of his chest.In the end,he decided it wouldn't hurt for her to know.Shutting her out seemed futile and energy wasting.

"Well,"he said."She...she wants our relationship to be a little more,but I'm-"

"Afraid?"

"Oh,no!Not of any commitment sorta thing,just,uh...just of..."

"Being _closer_."

"Yeah,"he admitted under his breath."Aside from the occasional peck on the cheek,it's never really been that heavy."

"Don't you want it to be?"she hazarded.

He turned away from her and cast his eyes down."My heart wants to,a whole lot,but,my head sorta keeps telling me that I am what I am.I've had girls kinda like me before,but with them or with Ellie,I know it probably wouldn't get far.That I'll mess it up,somehow.I don't know."

The woman just looked at him,deep in thought.She didn't need to use her gifts to feel his angst,and it felt deep and conflicting.She reached into her purse and took out a deck of ornately colored cards.

"Would you like me to show you your fortune,Theodore?"she asked as she turned the deck facedown and spread it out in an orderly,overlapping curve between the two of them on the fountain's rim."Who knows?Maybe your heart will finally do the driving for awhile."

"I guess,"Theodore said as he turned to face her and the prone cards.

"I know this isn't how I normally read the cards,but I want you to pick two cards from the deck,"the woman told him."Don't show me or tell me what they are."

Theodore reached over and began to make a decision to pick based on whatever reasons felt good to him at the moment,but the woman spoke up,saying,"Don't choose.Don't _think._Just pick them."

He did as he was asked and looked at them,puzzled by whatever cryptic message was hidden in the Tarot's art and title.

"I don't understand what they mean,"he said.But as he looked up to see her,she was gone.He looked around and found her already halfway across the path back to the palace.He repeated more loudly to her.

From the distance,she stopped,and with a slight smile,turned in his direction."When you see them,ask Simon and Jeanette about their meaning.They'll tell you!"she called out.Then she departed without another word.

Theodore knew enough about fortune tellers from late night television to know that whatever she was telling him,or _wanted_ to tell him,would or should be heeded very closely.He gathered his drumsticks but still sat on the rim,filling his mind with the sound of the water as he meditated absently on what kind of fate was written on the two cards he held in his sixteen year old hands.

The grass-carpeted ridge that overlooked the vast,beautiful vista of Bulgravia's Crown Valley made its reputation as a scenic wonder more credible by the moment.

Alvin stood about a few feet from the grassy edge,taking full view of the valley.Stretched out in the vista,he could see the ridge on the far side,verdant and heavy with woods,leading towards the small,distant chain of peaks that faded in and out of sight from the bluish,foggy mists that shrouded them.

Below spanned the green and rocky valley walls that almost gave him vertigo from their natural steepness and the river,twisting and moving forward like a cerulean serpent,carrying life along in its swells and slowly turning rocks into smooth pebbles.

Behind him,his and The Chipettes' families lounged on the soft turf,dining on the generous picnic spread before them.

"Not too shabby,Miss Miller,"Brittany commended while she nibbled at her leisure."A little picnic to celebrate our last night on tour was a pretty good idea."

"Oh,it was nothing at all,dear,"Miss Miller dismissed easily."You girls and the boys deserve it after all the hard work you all done."

David stretched his full length on the grass,his hands behind his head,and relaxed more deeply."I don't know about any of you,"he said with a sigh."But I'm going to sleep here until King Rudi has an heir."

"If they do have any heir,"Brittany said with some measure of sly flirtation."I hope the king and queen will impress on the young prince the benefits of an-"she paused for effect."Older woman."

"They might,Brittany,"Alvin called from where he was by the edge of the ridge."But I don't think Miss Miller's his type."He turned to look at his view,then he felt a light tap on his back as a grape thrown by Brittany connected.

When the grape hit him,he turned to her with a wry smile in time to see her give him a raspberry.Had he continued to look along the valley's basin,he might have seen a glimpse of something altogether intriguing.But he soon headed back towards the others,oblivious.

Theodore ignored such preceedings as he settled in to eat.He knew it was no accident that he was situated to be near Eleanor.Her sisters obviously conspired to arrange themselves to be near their respective boyfriends so there was no random pocket of space for him to dine in alone.

So he remained and robotically tried to enjoy his repast.He glanced to Eleanor,who also tried to be somewhere else while she was there,and he felt a pang of remorse hit him deep in the gut.

He knew that he was getting older and knew from personal sources in the family that that would reflect in how he saw Eleanor or any other girl,Chipmunk or Human.But despite the opening door that was leading him to the next vista in his life,he was having a good deal of nervousness trying to cross its threshold.

He was sure it was nervousness,not trepidation.He would never fear to love anyone.He found himself still looking at Eleanor eating and thought,'_No.Not even for Eleanor.Especially Ellie.'_

But his heart,at the moment,never felt so conflicted between his nature and his burgeoning desire.A desire that wanted to assert itself by holding Eleanor's plump,soft hand every time she went for a napkin or a potato chip,and he soon found himself longing for an involuntary cuddle.

Any purpose that existed to hold him back,and in doing so,confuse him further,was dying fast every time his eyes would watch her small,Cupie-doll lips kiss the edge of her glass to drink and leave them moist and sweet with juice that sometimes ran a little down her chin.

"Thank you,"Eleanor said self-consciously and it took Theodore a second to realize that he had given her a napkin,but the space of time between his last thought and the present action was a black wad of amnesia.He _wanted _to give her a napkin,that's all he remembered.

He knew he'd understand what had happened once his heart stopped hammering and his cheek pouched moistened again.

But,with some new sense of regret,he realized that his new found power of spontaneity was fading with the presence of just _thinking _about it,and he soon began to shrink a little inside again.

To any who watched them,they may have physically ate together,but their stiff body language would have been more than apparent in expressing their sheer uncomfortabilty.When they ate on their own,they were animated.There was a happy sensuality to the feedings which only became more noticeable when they fed together.At the moment,no one could distinguish their eating from a cow vacantly chewing cud.

From his vantage point,Alvin saw the little drama from a discrete distance and sighed inwardly.Brittany had told him about Eleanor's worries and his brother's apparent confusion or indifference,though he would put cash money down on it being confusion,simply because it was so difficult for Theodore to come to anything even approximating indifference.Indifference was,he knew,an alien concept to Theodore.

So,he promised to take Theodore aside later and guide him through this bad patch with his unique knowledge and experience with matters of the heart as he had done before when his youngest sibling ran into such troubles.But for now,he was hungry.Hungry and curious as to what would happen next between the two of them.

It came in the form of Theodore anxiously looking towards Simon and Jeanette and fishing in his pockets for something.Eleanor took notice of this,too,but said nothing about it,although it seemed she might have if others weren't around.As it stood,she simply watched him stand out of the corner of her eye and walk to his brother and girlfriend and pull out two folded cards.Then he sat beside Jeanette as she and Simon studied the cards at length.

"Who gave these to you?"she asked him.

"A woman who said she was here to entertain the king and queen,"Theodore replied."She was lost,and while I gave her directions,we talked,and she then she told me to pick two cards from this deck she had.I picked these two and she told me to ask you two what they mean."

Simon absently adjusted his glasses and said,"We'll,there's no doubt.These are Tarot."He held up the card face-up to Theodore."This is _The _Fool."

The card's face showed the fanciful image of a young man walking towards the edge of a cliff with complete obliviousness.Below was written clearly the words,_The Fool._

"He _is_ kinda foolish walking off a cliff,"Theodore commented.

Simon adjusted his glasses again and Jeanette could just hear the light clearing of his throat,her signal that he was in Lecture Mode.No matter,she realized.She'd begin her lecture of sorts with the second card soon enough.

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"Well,yes.He is acting is a foolish manner,"Simon said."However,his actions also illustrate the universal actions of all Humanity and Chipmunks in general."

One look into his younger brother's slight expression told him he was losing him fast.'_More explaination,less pontification,'_he thought to himself."What I mean is that _The Fool_ represents beginnings.He's only called a fool because he's about to take on Life's challenges with all its peril and pain.

"Then why do it?"Theodore asked,though to Simon,it sounded more like he had asked himself that very question.

"Because he has the innocent faith to try anyway,Theodore.All of us have,in one time or another,been in _The Fool_'s shoes.Trying something out for the first time,not knowing what would come from it."

"Yeah,"Theodore conceded slowly,"but he looks like he wants to walk of a cliff.Nothing _I'd_ want to try out."

"But you're looking at it too literally.If you'll notice,he isn't really looking at the cliff,just the sky above it.The cliff represents the hazards and hardships of Life in general.He's just not aware of them yet,hence his oblivious walk."

Theodore digested this and his ultimate choosing of the cards in the first place."It was meant for me,then,Simon,"he said with a measure of finality that stirred in him.Simon paused a moment to think about that and then shrugged it off as logical.

"Apparently.Whoever this lady was,she wanted you to get whatever personal information or understanding you could get from all of this.I can't say that I subscribe to this,personally,but there may be some insight in this that you can get from them.I can only tell you what they are."

Theodore nodded as Jeanette raised the second card to him,face-up.On it was printed a man suspended upside-down.

"_The Hanged Man_,"she explained."It symbolizes a sacrifice or a letting go.Maybe you'll have to give up something.Like a habit."

"Better some_thing,_thansome_one,_"he muttered uneasily as he glanced back at Eleanor while she stretched out on the grass after she eating.

"I know it's probably not my place to say,Theodore,but maybe you should talk to Ellie again,"she offered diplomatically.

"I don't know,Jeanette.I want to,but I don't know what to say to her right now,"he sighed."Probably hurt her feelings enough,already."

"All the more reason to talk to her.You can both get it all of your chests and clear the air.Otherwise,you'll never get this resolved well."

Theodore opened his mouth to say something that,from his expression,was certainly pessimistic,when he suddenly stopped and seemed to think the better of it.It showed in his face the jumble of thoughts that sprang to life,so he came to a decision.

"I'm going for a walk,guys."

The rented SUV was parked a distance from the clearing the two families were picnicking in,on a path that skirted near the edge of the ridge.A tree line that connected its foliage with the surrounding forests,formed a sparse partition between them.Theodore barely noticed.

He measured every step on the twig-covered floor,marking time with every sullen,worry-tinged thought that popped up in his mind concerning Eleanor and himself.

He caught himself clenching his jaws in anxiety and tried to calm himself in the echoing cries of birds,the rustle of the wind through the tree boughs and the sound of smaller animals in the underbrush,but the closer he came to the van,the more his stomach flipped.

Theodore looked back to the lightly treed clearing and the dim,green tunnel of woods he passed through,wondering if he were leaving them all,just as figuratively,in his life.He missed the comfort of his younger days.Uncomplicated and unencumbered with thoughts of future loves and their obligations he didn't feel ready for.

But he had to admit,if the next level of his relationship with Eleanor was so terrifying,then why was he almost towards the van,feeling both nervous,yet hopeful?

By the time he reached the SUV,his anxiety and wishful thinking didn't abate,but he began to feel it less.He opened the back door and immediately began rooting under the front passenger seat for a second or two,hoping no one found what he sought.

As soon as his fingers found it,he took it out for inspection,very relieved.In his hand was a small,grey box jewerly.He opened reverently and breathed easier when he saw his possession still where he left it.

It was a sterling silver charm bracelet and under closer observation,the name,_Eleanor_,was etched in cursive,catching in its flowing grooves,with the rest of the bracelet,the green tint of the woods in daytime.

With a sigh,he climbed out of the back seat and leaned against the rear tire on the same side he came out of.Then he took the bracelet out of the box and held it up to the light to look at,chiding himself for his cowardice and surprising himself for his boldness and secrecy in taking a portion of his savings and purchasing the gift in Madrid before they left for the next tour stop.He planned to give it to her on the last night of the tour.That was until his courage failed him.Again.

With the tour winding down in mere hours and the days not so hectic,Theodore had hoped he could give it to her,in private,in a better situation than the one they now faced,but indecision plagued him and he now found himself doubting his rather strong feelings and the soundness those feelings inspired.

And just as easily and just as quickly,he contemplated a different future with Eleanor.A more intimate one,as those his brothers and her sisters enjoyed.That excited him,even if he couldn't readily admit it to himself just yet.Under the thrall of seeming self-hypnosis,he stared at the glittering bracelet,his symbol for his hopes of better days with Eleanor,throwing reflected light into his mind and freeing it of its inhibitions.

Yes,he could take her aside,with gentle purpose,and while her beautiful face would show a mixture of concern and some curiosity,he'd open the case in front of her.Her soft brown eyes would grow even softer in the light of the silver band.He would carefully,lovingly,clasp it around her wrist and after she hugged him in the most sincerest of gratitude,he would look at her with a look that could only be give once in every lifetime,the look of first love.And then he would give her the kiss...

He smiled vacantly.It would have to be the perfect kiss.A kiss that would turn her spine into water.A kiss that would leave her wondering what month it was.A kiss that would be remembered when their fur turned gray and two generations proceeded them.

"Yeah...aggh!"Theodore was beginning to say until the sudden weight of something ran across his feet forcibly and crashed along the dead leaves,twigs,and grasses,freezing his heart.

Knowing there was no one around to possibly step on his feet,he came to the frightening conclusion that an animal,thinking or doing who knew what,ran up to him,and in his fright,he jerked his hands up reflexibly,causing his treasure to sail up and through the tree line that barricaded the far slope of the valley beyond.

Looking down in alert,he saw the reddish eyes of a rabbit staring out of the shelter of a mass of nearby tree roots.His culprit."Not nice,"he gasped to himself and to the rabbit while trying to calm his nerves and bring his adrenaline back down to nominal levels.Bad form for a fellow rodent to scare the living daylights out of another,he figured.

After several minutes of gathering his wits,Theodore resignedly summoned his courage to track down his present and carefully began stepping through and maneuvering into the treeline,and after a tense moment of vertigo on seeing the vast space of the valley stretched out before him,and an even more tense moment of clumsiness after spotting his bracelet shining on the vegetation up ahead,he gingerly began a sideways-creeping descent down the slope,closing in.

But as he reached the item,he began to worry.He risked a glance back to see that the distance from the anchoring trees he crossed had turned into a couple of uncomfortable yards,and the slope's surface of leaves,dead branches and mulch were already giving way under his weight and direction like sand on a dune.

The thought of sliding to certain injury or worse never left him,despite an equal determination to get back his gift for Eleanor.

A few more inches...

"Theodore."

Eleanor padded quietly towards the van that David was loaned for the day.According to Jeanette,he went for a walk somewhere nearby,but Eleanor felt he was away too long,so she entered the woods.

"Theodore,"she called out quietly,feeling the weight of the silent power of the forest around her,humbling her as she checked around the car when she reached it a few minutes later.

She saw no one inside from the window she peered into and was debating worryingly about searching further up the path and into the deeper wood.Eventually,she came to the decision that she would continue to search for him,if just to talk to him again.'_Maybe I was too pushy,'_she thought with a sigh.'_Am I that selfish?'_

Vacantly,she looked down at the sound of her feet crunching the branches and leaves as she went towards the back of the van.Then she saw something,out of place,on the ground.

She was about to chalk it up to an incredibly rare case of littering,in this of all places,when she remembered that she hadn't seen any other refuse anywhere she walked.Only here.

Eleanor reached down to pick it up and then put it out of her mind when a sound noticed by her, and, she would have surmised, by everyone else nearby, came into being. A low,mechanized rumble that gradually rose and reverberated from the depths of the picturesque valley.

Amidst the bass-like cadence of the far-off sound,Eleanor's concern spiked up another notch upon remembering Theodore.Out of blind curiosity and some spirit of optimism,she stepped her way through the treeline.Beyond that was the woodland slope that led to the bottom of the valley,the view beyond it,and the persistent noise from below.Nothing else.Then she returned to the van.

While her mind did battle with the ghosts of her pessimism,Eleanor tried to let her intuition flow,hoping for something,wondering where on Earth was Theodore now.And wondering who'd leave a jewelry case here in the woods,as she thoughtfully played the object between her fingers.


	3. Chapter Three

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Chapter Three

It was as if they were mobilizing for war. A slow, seemingly endless wave of mechanized equipment and living beings moved as orderly and as swiftly as stealth allowed, along the path of the riverbank.

Platoons of armed SecuriMunks escorted the growing numbers of full troop transports and supply trucks that were flanked themselves, by column after column of marching P.A.C.'s, two abreast and armed for bear.

Personal transports and shuttles filled with eager and apprehensive MunkTechs and their supervisors, cruised alongside, before and after a single, armored command vehicle, its iron back made spiny with antennae, sensors and closed ports for military-augmented ThunderGun emplacements.

Far behind them, trundling in the wet, gravely path, were the quartet of MobileHolds, mammoth, tracked and boxy cargo transports that were carrying whatever was needed in serious bulk. And further back, now gliding away from the riverbank and back out to open waters, were the flotilla of barges that brought them all.

Inside the mobile command center, operators manned sensor stations, scanning everywhere they could for signs of detection or intrusion, although due to their position in the valley floor, that was becoming difficult. The interior command pod itself, rested in a gyroscopically stable cradle, its passengers spared every bump and jounce the driver couldn't avoid.

Arthur felt particularly lucky that The Roaming Eyes opted to take a personal shuttle rather than ride with him and his father. Glory and conquest, high finance, the fall of Humanity, the return of his people to their greatness...Jeanette. He had enough on his mind without the two of them wishing his destruction while they stared at him, plotting, as was their want.

"We're closing in on The Green Gate, sirs," the driver announced through the intercom amid the busy chatter of his co-workers. "ETA, ten minutes."

"Very good. Inform us when we've reached The Gate," Arthur said, holding his excitement to himself just barely.

Philip glanced up from his clipboard and watched his son fight the good fight to keep from smiling in triumph. Seeing him sitting on his chair, excited about it all and yet commanding as easily as breathing, gave him such a sense of nostalgia. He was no older than Arthur was when he was using his developing smarts and business savvy to help expand the I.T.O. the business world and the world in general knew as International Technological Operations.

It was the business end that flourished and fed the needed coffers and technological strength of the Iron Tree Organization, the true I.T.O. and soon-to-be true threat to the world's Humans, as well.

"Exciting, isn't it?" Phillip asked him quietly.

The question snapped the youth from his thoughts and he replied, "Am I _that_ obvious?" Apparently, being too emotional now was becoming _unbecoming_ a Field Executive and he didn't want his father to dote on him.

However, his father simply continued to beam softly at his boy. Moments that brought this on didn't come too often but when they did, Phillip would eagerly take advantage of them.

"Despite all of the setbacks you've encountered, "he said to him. "you've persevered and moved us closer to our goal, Arthur. I'm proud of you."

That declaration always moved Arthur. "Thank you, sir," he said in hushed pride. It seemed that, in the end, love, either familial or otherwise, felt better than business deals, high technology, or even global conquest.

He swiveled in his seat more to face him, saying," I suppose when you we're a Field Executive, Grandfather couldn't make it easy for you, either, hmm?"

Phillip nodded solemnly, but his air of pride hadn't changed. "When I was Field Exec., he told me once that during World War Two, when _he_ was an F.E.,a Nazi Army engineer broke into one of our European Holds, Omicron, I think, and stole the plans to our ThunderGun design. So, we kept tabs on him during the war. It was decided then that if we waited and saw what he was going to do with the plans, eventually, we could not only eliminate the thief, but all of his contacts, too. Publicity for smashing a Nazi Think Tank would have made priceless PR."

Arthur, forgetting the moment of history he was about to enter, stood captivated by the tale. "What happened?"

"Well, it seemed the engineer was more enterprising than we thought. He didn't tell his supervisors about the theft and then arranged to be transferred to Hitler's Afrika Korps. It was a bit later when we found out why."

"ETA to The Green Gate, four minutes, sirs," the driver replied, unknowingly interrupting Phillip.

"Understood," Phillip said. Then he absently ruffled through his clipboard. He was teasing Arthur and wanted to see if he was really interested in the rest of the story.

"Well?" Arthur said with slight impatience. "What was he doing in Africa?"

With mock-absentmindedness, Phillip quickly stopped fiddling and resumed his tale, killing his grin with a measure of control. "Well, he had built a working model of our gun, but he hadn't been using it as a weapon. He had discovered from some source or another, that there was an undisclosed mountain range outside of both Allied and Axis territories that had veins choked with raw diamonds."

"So, he was using the ThunderGun as a portable drill," Arthur figured.

"Yes. Before we caught up with him, he had amassed an impressive and hidden cache of uncut stones. When we told him to surrender, he caused a cave-in that we thought had killed him. Years later, I discovered that he had escaped through an air shaft he made earlier.

Since he operated alone for profit, he wasn't much of a threat to us. He was rich and kept quiet about the gun and us. Made quite a name for himself in the Underworld as a jewelry fence and smuggler after the war. Furstein was his name. Karl, I think."

Arthur was about to ask about that when the intercom spoke again.

"Sirs, we've arrived."

"Signal the column to stop and take entry positions near the aperture," Phillip commanded. He regarded Arthur. "Ready to make history, Arthur?"

"Sir," the boy said with unabashed confidence, "I was born for this moment."

A disheveled Theodore watched the massive procession moving past him from the relative safety of the cluster of shrubs he finally came to rest behind. He tried to still his ragged breathing and physical exertion from the headlong tumble he took from the ridge far above and thanked his lucky stars, shakily, that the slope was more diagonal then vertical, otherwise the tumble would have been a full-blown, unsurvivable plummet.

He had encountered his fair share of SecuriMunks in Italy and wasn't too eager to meet them a second time. However, he was grateful for all of the tracked and wheeled heavy vehicles' noise masking whatever sounds he thought he might have been making.

Despite his caution, his eyes scanned around every truck, transport and trooper for something. Something that made him fall through the underbrush and rough terrain to retrieve. Judging from where he saw it fall, it would have been close by.

The procession was begin to thin out and the bulk of its rear guard was moving through its orderly paces around the few transports that trundled behind the rest. Theodore crouched lower among the branches when he saw some of the SecuriMunks look in his and the shrubbery's direction.

The instinct of "Fight or Flight" crept up his spine when one of the troopers began walking towards his position, a hand reaching for his belt that was adorned with, among other things, a ThunderGun.

Theodore gauged the situation grimly. The line of troopers and equipment were almost gone, moving away beyond a bend several yards distant, and he hoped to wait them all out until they left in their entirety. Now he'd have to run and escape somehow, though he knew with that many troopers remaining, even as they began to depart, he would easily have been captured or worse. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best time to go after the bracelet, after all.

Another few feet and the approaching SecuriMunk would be able to make out Theodore through the bushes. Unconsciously, he balled up his fists to either prepare for a doomed run or an even dubious fight.

__

Five feet...

Four feet...

"Just got the call from up ahead," said one of the farthest SecuriMunks to the one heading for Theodore, who stopped momentarily. "We've gotta move out."

"In a minute," he said. "I've gotta go."

Theodore tensed inwardly and in a silent panic, he didn't know what would have been worse, getting caught or getting soaked. He gritted his teeth and regretfully made his decision, adrenaline flowing.

"Hey, you can do that later," his partner admonished him, worryingly. "They just ordered the rest of us to catch up with Rear Guard and the detail. They're already assembled at the site. C'mon."

Then he started walking up the graveled path to rejoin the others, saying, as he departed, "I hope they don't dock your pay."

With that, the other SecuriMunk stopped short of the bushes and for the space of a thought, debated between momentary relief and _monetary _relief. With his partner gone, himself alone and the sound of wheeled machinery beckoning him from the distance, he quickly decided that he could hold it in.

Trying not to think about the river behind him, he heeled about and, with a trot, followed his partner around the bend.

With his heart and head thundering from the close call, Theodore collapsed on the cool, stony ground, shaking as violently as the bushes.

"Where's the bracelet?" he asked himself, shakily.

Keeping his eyes on the now deserted path along the river, he cautiously stood up from behind the shrubbery. A bright flash in the water's edge made him stand on alert.

Watching the bend for anything to happen, Theodore moved with as much grace and speed as his nerves could allow towards the river bank. When he reached the edge, he breathed a sigh of gratitude upon seeing the bracelet gently being nudged along the bank by the swift current, too heavy to be swept into the deeper flow of the water.

He scooped it up and put it in his pocket. Then froze like ice when his shoulder was gripped by a strong, heavy, massive hand that yanked him backwards with incredible ease.

Out of reflex, Theodore reached for his shoulder and felt thick, hairless fingers hold him like a vice, but his fearful glance to their owner changed into relief when he saw the towering, raven-haired man standing grimly over him.

"You're lucky Eleanor was right about where you were and there was a trail that I could drive to get us here," David growled as he looked around, checking for signs of SecuriMunks." How did you get down here?"

"Sorry, Dave," Theodore said sheepishly. He couldn't tell him about the bracelet, couldn't tell him about his doubts or his conflict with Eleanor. He didn't know why, but everything in him _screamed_ that his father just wouldn't understand. "I was going for a walk when I, uh, slipped and fell down here. I was going to come back, but those Chipmunk soldiers for I.T.O. showed up and I had to hide."

"I.T.O.?" gasped Simon and Jeanette together as they came from where the van was parked, a few yards away, overhearing Theodore.

"They're here?" Simon asked with ill-disguised trepidation and concern. "Where, Theodore?"

Theodore gestured to the ruts and tracks of their soldiers and vehicles, telling them all more than he could at the moment.

"They must be around that bend, guys," said Jeanette after looking at the fresh trail. She automatically glanced over to Simon. He had been acting a little tense since Venice and she noticed that, wordlessly. She knew after all they went through with the organization, both together and with their respective families, he wouldn't just walk away without knowing what they were doing. That would be the most prudent in terms of gathering information before coming up with a strategy on what to do next. So why did she keep feeling the tendrils of some darker reason to it all?

Then, without any more preamble, Simon trotted away from the group, keeping close to the wall of the outcropping that partially hid whatever was beyond the bend. David, in a bound, bolted from his place near Theodore, catching up with his son.

"Where are you going? Get back with the others, Simon," he told him, keeping his voice low but commanding. This wasn't like Simon.

Simon favored his father a momentary look before inching his way along the wall towards the edge. "We have to know what they're up to, Dave. If we go to the authorities now, they'll get away. You know what they're capable of."

"That's right, I do. That's why I want you back here, right now."

David reached over to grab hold of Simon, but Simon noticed the motion and bolted further forwards towards the edge of the outcropping, terrifying everyone with the possibility of detection.

Simon leaned his face as far around the corner as he dared and was struck from a wholly unexpected sight. He turned back to David and the others.

"Theodore, there's no one there," he said sourly.

"They _were_ here, Simon," Theodore shot back. "You can see the tracks, can't you?"

Simon was taken aback with that. They obviously were there. He chastised himself internally for being so emotional about I.T.O. to the point of near-suicide. He rubbed his eyes to banish both the tension and the embarrassment.

"You're right, Theodore. I'm sorry. "Then he looked to his father. "I'm sorry, Dave. I guess I lost my head for a moment."

"We'll talk about it later, Simon," said David. Jeanette with more than enough convincing, wasn't too surprised by Simon's rashness now. It _was_ suspect. More than simply wanting to help stop them.

David risked a peek at what Simon saw to satisfy a moment's curiosity. Other than the tracks on the ground that grooved the winding path, there was no sign of The Iron Tree Organization. But if they _were_ there, and they _were_ planning something major against Humans, and they _could_ do something to stop them...

"Stay here, Simon," he told him, stepping out from the shelter of the hiding spot. "I'll check up ahead to see if they're still here. If they are, we're getting out of here and telling King Rudi what's going on." 

"Yes, Dave," said Simon, quite worried for him, now.

The instant David left, the rest began to file around Simon.

"Where's David going?" Miss Miller asked in a whisper.

"He said he going to check to see if they're still here." Simon explained as he watched David head towards the safety of a boulder settled against the wall of the valley slope up ahead. He reached it in a few moves. "If he sees them, we'll all go to the king and tell him the news."

David had ventured farther ahead than he wanted initially. Looking back, he couldn't see the others too well due to distance, but as long as he wasn't spotted, he kept moving forwards quietly.

The wide tracks led up to something interesting up ahead. Taking a cautious course along the wall of the valley, he came close to it, finally. An immense cavern mouth, thirty-five feet or so wide, yawned from the side of the valley. And in it were the sounds of machinery and engines echoing softly in the depths.

He crept to the edge and looked in after he was certain of no guards. The tracks went into the cave but the darkness just inside it made its direction and distance impossible to determine without going further in.

Still, this was just what he needed to convince himself and the others to tell King Rudi now. There was no sense in interrupting his friend's day with something like this if it wasn't substantiated, at least.

David edged back out and then turned to walk quickly back, when a shove in his back made him stop cold. He slowly turned his head around to see a uniformed Chipmunk male holding a high-tech, bi-barreled pistol against the lumbar region of his back.

He could feel a low hum come from the lensed double muzzles and a tingle of a charge slipping from the barrels and playing along his spine like a ghost.

"Lost, Human?" the SecuriMunk asked smugly, keeping his weapon pressed to the small of David's back.

Simon snapped his head back with a start. "They caught him! There must have been a patrol he didn't see."

Amidst the quietly panicked commotion that soon ensued, Theodore was stricken silent. His bracelet, his reason for coming down there, was going to kill David. His indirect actions would take his father away from him, a father he actually knew. A distraction _could_ save him and despite his every screaming thought _not_ to do it, he soon found himself turning to the edge of the outcropping and walking away from it before anyone took notice.

Struggling to clear his mind of hesitation, Theodore amicably stepped out away from the protection of the outcropping. His face, a tight mask of friendly naiveté and ignorance.

For everyone who was behind him, they though he couldn't have been more foolhardy, and in their panic, were about to reach out and snatch him back to the safety of the rocky corner, when they themselves were snatched up into a fast and massive bear hug by Miss Miller.

"Quiet!" Beatrice hissed close to their heads. "Or we'll all get caught." They fearfully complied and in a hush, listened to what was to transpire.

Both Chipmunk captor and Human captive watched with equal levels of incredulity as Theodore tried to saunter up to them, both focusing on the SecuriMunk's presence and trying to ignore David's internal melange of personal fear,anger and worry for his son, that bubbled to the surface of his face.

"H-Hi...how are you?" Theodore asked the trooper from a few feet away with the biggest grin he could manage under the circumstances.

"Who are you?" the SecuiMunk squeaked gruffly, still guarding David. "What are you doing here? Are you with this guy?"

Theodore looked convincingly puzzled, as if the question came completely out of Left Field for him. Then he snapped into Happy Mode again.

"Oh, well, my folks were camping in the valley and, uh, anyway, we heard this noise that sounded like a Monster Truck show going on, so I told my cousin, I said, 'Cousin, I'll betcha it's a Monster Truck show,' and she said to me, 'Betcha there isn't.' So I-"

"Quiet!" the trooper ordered to him. "Come over here. I'm covering the both of you, so no tricks."

David watched Theodore walk solemnly towards him and wondered even more solemnly if his son really thought that this scheme could honestly work against his guard. At least it didn't seem like the trooper would shoot them dead just yet, but it wasn't much of a reprieve, either.

Theodore finally came alongside David. but he was still facing in the direction of the SecuriMunk, hands, David noticed, clasped behind his back. What was Theodore planning?

"Turn around and face front," said the SecuriMunk, and as Theodore did so, his captor noticed where his hands were. "What's behind your back, boy?"

Theodore shifted around to face the trooper with a sheepish grin while still keeping his back and hands from him. "Uh, I wish I could show you, sir, but you see,I found this not too far from here and I was hoping to keep it a secret, y,know?"

"Show me your hands, now," the SecuriMunk ordered again, pointing the pistol at Theodore momentarily. A moment that cost him.

By the time the SecuriMunk realized the full-blown error he had made in taking his weapon off of an opponent roughly two and a half times bigger and a great deal stronger than him, his ThunderGun was ripped from his hand, his body effortlessly lifted up and his breath and consciousness driven from him as he was slammed full force against the nearby rocky wall.

"Thanks, Dave," Theodore said to him relievedly while masking his shock. David was never a violent man, but seeing him make short work of the other Chipmunk was both awesome and unnervingly quick. For a split second, Theodore felt the closeness of their two species widen and the normally moribund and instinctual fear of any large predator, snap to life. Not so much because David's opponent was a fellow Chipmunk, but because it swiftly brought home the fact that Humans were, as a species, very, very powerful.

David sighed shakily as he stood by the prone soldier. "Don't ever do that again, Theodore, even if I'm in trouble. There's no sense for the both of us getting caught," he admonished.

"Yes, Dave."

To lighten the mood, David went over to his son and gave him an admiring hug. "How did you come up with that, anyway? That was pretty brave of you."

Theodore's eyes lit proudly. "Well, I didn't want you to get hurt, Dave. I guess I didn't think about the danger."

"Well, don't do that again, "said David with more understanding. "I don't want you to get hurt, either. I don't want to lose you."

His son gave a self-conscious smile. "Okay, Dave." Then he looked past the Human to the now noticed cave. "Did you find anything?"

David was on the verge of answering when he looked past Theodore to see the others running from the outcropping towards them.

"_Theodore!", _Eleanor shouted, throwing her arms around his neck, hugging him hard. Thinking she was so close to losing him before any sort of resolution could be made together, she thought, '_Nuts to our problems.' _"I thought you-"Then she realized where she was and who were around her. Face reddening through her fair fur, she struggled to get her composure back, while Theodore unsuccessfully tried to look unaffected by her emotions, his heart hammering now for Eleanor than because of the close call with the SecuriMunk.

"Not bad, Theodore," Alvin crowed, slapping his brother's back so hard, Theodore almost lost his balance. "That was pretty gutsy. We thought you'd buy it with Dave."

"Yeah," Theodore said shakily.

Then the sound of boots made him and everyone around him hold his or her breath, as a platoon of SecuriMunks came rushing out of the cave mouth, weapons drawn and expressions unpleasant. David quickly realized that they probably were hiding near the entrance and were watching the two of them since the fight. When the rest of the group joined him and Theodore, they made their move.

They were promptly searched and herded into the cool, dark maw of the cave, hands behind their heads. It took a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the low-light, but as they silently passed among the stalactites and stalagmites that toothed the interior, they could see and hear the blocky near-silhouettes of idling vehicles and the footsteps of more SecuriMunks becoming alert to the captives' presence up ahead.

The chamber they entered spanned before them like a natural cathedral. One the size of four city blocks. As the two families began to notice the soft, pervasive green glow that bathed everything in the area along with them and all of I.T.O., they also noticed something else. Something that, to the Humans, was impressive, but to the six Chipmunks, was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Surrounding them all, situated in north, south, east and western positions in the chamber, were titanic statues of four Chipmunks in elaborate dress. At their bases were bold, obvious inscriptions done in a style of cuneiform and they all were captured gesturing towards the next curio in the cavern.

In what could be deemed the center of the chamber's immensity, stood two massive, crystalline columns, their smooth sides adorned with intricate icons and more of the alien cuneiform. They were forked midway, giving them a double-tined appearance and from their depths, an ethereal green glow flowed out from their translucent cores.

Like the tuning forks they resembled, they resonated as they glowed, in a low frequency that struck chords in the bones of every living thing in the area.

A platoon of SecuriMunks marched past the waiting trucks and other troops and technicians, towards the one-hundred foot expanse between the forks. MunkTechs monitored every function they could find from the columns while those that weren't, were recording and translating the glyphs on the forks' shafts.

Amidst the sounds of study, preparation and general activity, all who weren't too busy to see, watched the air shimmer where the group of armed Chipmunks stepped in between the columns. As their mass passed the threshold, the forks glowed in a deeper hue of green and the tonal hum they made, rose in register.

Soon the last trooper disappeared into the warp, looking as though she had walked through a barrier of calm water, leaving ripples of distortion from her body's wake.

At a steady pace, vehicles and bodies began to move into the forks' threshold and, in similar fashion, vanished from sight.

"Sonic keys, probably," Jeanette wondered aloud. "Theoretical dimensional egress?"

"Could be," said Simon before they both were ordered silent.

Though there was still more of I.T.O. to move in, someone gave the order to stop the column's movement in favor of the prisoners. In heightening degrees of personal terror, both families were herded towards the forks by their guards, who then took guard positions around them when they all reached the threshold.

Their vanguard went through silently, allowing Theodore and Eleanor the luxury of seeing the bodies get swallowed by the warp, leaving nothing behind but disturbed air lightly moving across their faces. Then the troopers to the rear and sides of the families goaded them forward by gunpoint.

Theodore instinctively looked over to Eleanor, his fear, evident. He always acknowledged, respected and secretly was even attracted to her pluck and confidence. Her presence calmed him more than he knew, since he couldn't be certain whether these other Chipmunks were actually going somewhere or committing mass suicide and were taking them with them.

She glanced back to him, her eyes betraying her own apprehension, and she reached out to hold his hand. Not for his comfort, the flash of sudden insight told him, but for her own. Eleanor wordlessly sought _his_ strength, needed_ his_ stability.

At that moment, his insecurity fled and worth filled him to the brim and somewhere in his being, he wanted her to know, if this was the end, that he still felt for her. He held her hand more firmly and she could feel his understanding through the contact. He gave as confident a smile as he could manage. Then he stepped through.


	4. Chapter Four

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Chapter Four

The twin moons sat in a high vigil, looking down over the ruins of one the outlying villages like sad eyes. Aside from the animal calls and the night wind in the dark branches, nothing within the village square of FallBerry sounded. In truth, the complete absence of every living Chipmunk there was the most compelling reason for the silence.

Through the wall-like tangle of felled trees near the entrance into town, a slightly less than a meter tall figure dressed in an armor of leather and a silver-green breastplate, stepped. Had the villagers been around to see him, the whole place would have rang with oxyphonic cheers and music.

But to this advanced scout for The Autumnal Guard, who was now quietly moving among the trees that made up the dwellings, seeing any male or female still living after this would have been gratitude enough.

The Chipmunk knight soberly went through the somber task of inspecting every home and shop that either rested in the canopies or were built into the protective trunks of the silent trees that made up the village proper.

Leafy debris almost carpeted the grass and earth of the area, as though a hurricane lashed through, but to his chagrin, this was nothing new to him. Torn vines with bits of shredded clothing held in inert tendrils festooned the trees, rooftops, windows and doors.

He stepped into a home and found the disheartening. More of the vines, which he knew weren't of a species indigenous to the continent, and long, thick thorns, like discarded claws, littering the floor. Others were embedded in the walls. All were tinged in recent red.

He tried to filter out his footsteps so as to listen for survivors, but in the back of his mind, he was already going over the report he'd submit later. A report that, like so many others, was having an all too typical and grievous sound to it. This was a dead place.

Picking up a broken length of vine, he sniffed at the oozing sap.

"Four days," he murmured. "No more hit and runs. This was a hunt."

He stood and turned for the door when a sound turned him into lead.

It floated from upstairs and was something he hadn't thought he'd hear. A baby's cry.

Sprinting as quietly as possible up the carved staircase, he reached the door of a small nursery and entered. The place was dimly lit with a single crys-lamp's radiating glow showing the same level of destruction he saw downstairs.

Homing in on the sound, he came to a crib draped in torn vines. Looking in, the knight could see the fidgety infant, kicking and pushing the covers. He reached down to pick up this little miracle and his foot splashed into a blood puddle that pooled in front of the crib, the legacy of that room's victim.

The knight cradled the baby's head and back and got ready to lift.

"How did the baby make it?" he wondered.

The crib's bottom was instantly wrenched downward and broke in a fast fold along its center. Vines snaked out and whipped through the bedding, clutching the space where the baby was a moment ago.

The knight hugged the infant and leapt back as more vines blurred out from underneath the crib to pull his legs out from under him.

"Tangler," he fumed as he ran from the room to the sound of the crib being crushed and pulled apart in violent frustration of a missed kill. It chilled him.

He burst out of the house, the baby clutching the braids of his breastplate as he looked for the entrance of the village to escape. He was thankful that there weren't anymore traps sprung on him on his way from the nursery, but he knew he and his charge wouldn't be safe until they made it back to Command.

Following the route he took while he searched for survivors, he made a hectic beeline back to the entrance and the path back to the forest, where it was relatively safe.

Upon seeing the entrance, he put on as much speed as he dared with a baby in his arms. And fell when a vine grasped his ankle with noticeable force.

The knight turned quickly to avoid landing on the infant, crashing on his back with a hard grunt. He set the crying baby aside on the ground and went for his scabbard.

The vine, still holding him, lifted in the middle and undulated from that point towards the rest of it that hid in the shadows of the entrance. Then its owner emerged.

The figure's appearance gave its opponent the impression that it was a knight or warrior, also, but only in that sense. Otherwise, it was a nightmare of Nature.

It bared a long, impossibly sharp spike of smooth wood that seemed to grow from the top of its bulbous forearm and extended well past its thorn-clawed, vine-like hand.

Yet the duration of time during the weapon's growth, however swift, gave the knight precious seconds to unsheathe and stand. The thorn-spike swung with purpose, its tip seeking to gouge or gore its victim.

The plant-fighter had no physical eyes to speak of, but it followed, pivoted and pressed its attacks on the knight.

The knight dipped his head to the side to avoid a stabbing thrust to the eye, then came around and brought his blade down across the thorn weapon. The edge bit into the woody material and for a few moments, both combatants were locked.

They circled, each one's mind focused on the distance of their bodies in the clinch and an opportunity to exploit or further avoid it.

The plant-fighter brought up its free arm and the tentacular vine that tripped the Chipmunk earlier came waving out to embrace. Seeing it, the knight lifted his leg and pulled a keen-edged dagger from a sheath tied to it.

The baby cooed and the knight turned his head in shock as a second plant-fighter was born from the shadows of the opposite end of the entrance, coiling and unfurling its vine for a killing clutch.

With no further thought, he held his dagger blade-first and threw it across space to the second foe's eyeless, fleshy head. The weapon was driven so deep from the throw that only half of the hilt was buried in it when the plant creature was knocked back into the darkness.

He then brought his boot up and kicked hard against his opponent's wood and leaf covered torso. As the creature was propelled back, its thorn-weapon loosed itself from the knight's sword.

It lurched forward again in attempt to recover and raised its head to "see" the rodent come across with a sweeping blow that nearly decapitated it, turning the back of its neck into a hinge.

It shuddered, falling into a heap. Then the knight knelt beside it, turning it over on its back. He then stood again and without preamble, drove his sword full force into its chest.

The shock of impact told him that he found and struck something hard within it. That prompted him to work the blade back and forth so that the double-edge could cut the wound opening wider.

Then the sword was free again, but its point was buried inside something that was pulled free with it. A large, pulsating seed, like the flesh-covered pit of a peach, dripped and radiated warmth to him.

Ripping it free from the remaining root like connections that still anchored it to its owner, he stuffed the seed into a pouch on his belt for later disposal.

That creature would not rise again, but its companion was still a threat. One the Chipmunk knight didn't have time to attend to.

Carrying up the rodent child, he dashed into the verdant darkness, preying that they didn't run into any more ambushes in the coming light of near morning between FallBerry and Command. 

About ten minutes after their departure, the second plant-fighter spasmed and stumbled back to mobile life again, its face healed and the dagger thudding to the turf.

The hunt for the mammals went well, it figured, yet the failure of the trap, the rescue of such precious animal material as the Chipmunk baby and the subsequent escape of _two_ Chipmunks was most...regrettable.

It would not mourn the loss of its partner. Such emotion didn't even exist, even in the simplest electrochemical sense. It was grown for fierce loyalty and fiercer combat.

It shuffled from the village, composing soon after the message it would have to send to its master and creator. The report had to be succinct and to the point. The Prince wouldn't have it any other way...

Everything in Theodore told him that the surreal passage through the pillars was a dream and nothing more. Except he had reason to dismiss the dismissal when he greeted the alien day still holding Eleanor's trembling hand.

He looked around, taking in the ivy and moss covered ruins scattered about the clearing where an identical set of tuning fork-pillars stood. And the trees. From the paths that led to the surrounding forests to the mountains that surrounded them, all were covered in ancient green. On field trips and the occasional visit to his mother's, Theodore confessed silently that he never seen so many trees or felt the air so thick with unfettered life.

He heard Eleanor gasp and thought that she, too, had been in awe of the outdoor surroundings until he noticed the armed Chipmunk soldiers motioning for them to step away from the wide space between the pillars.

The two teens obeyed and then the next platoon of troops materialize before the humming poles. And another, and another, and another. Each joining the growing ranks already in the clearing.

Then the machines came. Coming into view like ghosts and then shaking the grassy ground when they solidified and moved. First the walking, one-manned Personal Armored Combatants, or PAC's. Large, mechanized, chipmunk-shaped war vehicles. They were followed by all of the support vehicles that I.T.O. had brought.

It took little more than an hour to fill the clearing with everyone and everything that had originally been in the erstwhile cave, and although I.T.O. was charitable enough not to have killed them where they stood, both Theodore and Eleanor knew and feared that it wouldn't last.

From where they stood under the dubious protection of their armed guards, the youngsters tried to find their families in the milling crowds. Orders being called and answered and clustered waves of unfamiliar faces rewarded their efforts.

For long moments in their private quiet, the feeling of being alone and stranded with I.T.O. in, what felt like unfamiliar territory, settled over their hearts like a black shroud. How would they survive, how _could_ they survive in that organization's tender mercies.

They were branded as traitors to their species. They heard as much before the transition to wherever they were at present, so the two entertainers were given no allusions as to how they would be dealt with when all was said and done.

A pensive Eleanor took notice of an equally pensive Theodore, still looking around, discarding faces that weren't friends or family and nervewrackingly trying to put on a brave face in the process. For as long as she could remember, she had been as much support system for him as girlfriend, helping him through rough spots not nearly as dire as this with an almost maternal bearing.

It wasn't that Theodore was completely helpless, more that has personable nature and nonthreatening bearing made it hard for him to be completely assertive or commanding when situations arose where he needed to be. He was almost superego.

Still, despite that, or perhaps because of that, she loved him. She would try to look after him and comfort him, even if it was her last living act. What she hadn't known or even considered to think, was that despite Theodore's well-founded anxiety and confused feelings, he, too, had made the selfsame vow to her.

Their mutual thoughts broke off at the noticing of a commotion moving through the crowds, but its cause wasn't discerned by either of them. Then, the two were herded by gunpoint towards what seemed to be the center of it.

Other armed groups ahead parted away from Theodore and Eleanor and their escort like a grim procession and the unease the teens felt earlier intensified with every approaching step they were forced to make. 

One of the SecuriMunks apparently felt Eleanor was lagging behind a bit, so he pressed the barrel of his already drawn ThunderGun against her upper back and shoved her hard.

With a pained gasp, she stumbled forward, almost tripping and pitched forward into a fall. She righted herself in time to hear a familiar voice command,"Stop it!"

Theodore's.

The escort came to a tight halt as he and the SecuriMunk just stared at each other in challenge. Eleanor was stunned silent. She could see that although Theodore stood his ground against his better-trained opponent, he trembled visibly, also. Combat just wasn't what he was used to.

And yet he remained resolute. He would flinch, but he wouldn't back off and he wouldn't change his mind.

Theodore's mind was blank, running on adrenaline auto-pilot. The reason for doing this offset some of the shock of realizing _what_ he had done. Stare down someone who could burn him down in an instant.

'Not good', he thought soberly, seeing how the SecuriMunk wasn't backing down at all and behind his eyes, was seemingly wanting Theodore to test his devotion to Eleanor for the simple interest of causing as much harm to him in the shortest amount of time.

Theodore barely felt his forearm being held reassuringly by Eleanor."It's okay, Theodore,"she whispered, clearly fearing an escalation of trouble he couldn't get out of and wanting to show her pride of him."I'm alright."

The stand-off held for another minute until another SecuriMunk with command piping on the uniform approached them.

"Stand down, soldier,"he commanded in an even tone. A flicker of hesitation ghosted across they younger officer's face, then he stepped away from Theodore slightly.

The SecuriMunk Commander turned a gruff eye to his charges."Okay, you two,"he scolded. Then he regarded Theodore.

"Pretty gutsy, kid,"he said with a measure of admiration, then snarled,"But give us trouble again and there'll _be_ trouble."He turned to his squad."Troops, resume!"

The escort continued to move along, but Eleanor still afforded a moment to talk. She put her hand out and held Theodore's, ignoring the spasms of fear she felt through it."Thank you, Theodore, but I don't want you to get hurt over me."Then she added quietly,"You might be the only one I'll ever see again. I don't want to lose you."

Theodore was too nervous to say anything. The stand-off did that, but he would have found it difficult to say much to what she had just said, at any rate, so charged with emotion was the look in her brown eyes.

He looked inward. It was something to do and something he needed. His mind played with the notions of actual chivalry. _Chivalry_. It had to be that because there was no other explanation for it. No thought and no judgment. Just an automatic gut reaction that shocked _him_ more than her oppressor.

He couldn't help noticing what a nervous wreck he became because of it, and he wondered if he could ever do it again. Would ever do it again. Knowingly.

That ambivalence weighed on him as the escort finally finished navigating the two prisoners through the sea of I.T.O.. They stopped at the back of a ring of Chipmunks: SecuriMunks, MunkTechs and a smattering of I.T.O. company execs. After a few minutes, Theodore and Eleanor were brought inside the center of the ring, and then their escort departed.

Their worry turned into fast relief when they saw their brothers and sisters congregated in a cluster with their backs slightly turned to them and large colored pieces of cloth lying by their feet. Theodore and Eleanor moved closer to see what was going on and was about to ask why they didn't see David or Miss Miller yet, when their preconceived perceptions of the world took a jarring nosedive.

Standing in the middle of their children's protective ring was what could have been interpreted as David Seville and Beatrice Miller, though it was a little hard to do so, since the two of them were physically indistinguishable from the boys, the girls and every other Chipmunk in the clearing. Words died in the two teens' mouths.

Covered in the now way oversized shirt and dress, David and Miss Miller gave synchronous looks of apology to their youngest, looking as stricken as the rest of their families.

David was wearing a style to his tuft of head fur that was similar to the one he sported during his Human days and was slightly taller than his sons, just as Beatrice also was a little taller than her daughters. Her elderly features made the transition to her Chipmunk persona very successfully.

"Dave, is that you?"Theodore squeaked, completely flabbergasted. To which David, upon opening his mouth, squeaked back,"Yes, Theodore. It's me. I don't know what happened. One moment, I stepped through those tuning forks in the cave and the next moment, I looked like this."

"Are you all right, Miss Miller?"asked Eleanor.

"We-Well, I don't know, dear,"Miss Miller chirped out."I think so. I'm just glad you're two are okay. We were all worried when we didn't see you."

"Well, where are we?"Brittany fretted."It doesn't look like Bulgravia to me. Heck, it doesn't even _feel_ like Bulgravia around here."

Simon straightened up and cleared his throat, more to combat his own apprehension than to look authoritarian."If I would hazard a guess, I'd say we're not on Earth anymore."

All but Jeanette unisoned,"What?"

"I'm afraid he's right,"she voiced."Those pillars in the cave had to have been using sound to make dimensional portals. That's what brought us here."

"Okay, but where's here?"Alvin asked.

"Exactly where we're meant to be,"said a confident voice nearby."Where we're destined to be. Where it all began."

As one, both families turned to the sound and saw Arthur standing beside three other well-dressed males, who watched their prisoners curiously.

"Who are you?"asked David as he protectively walked ahead of the rest to regard the speaker.

"My name is Arthur Duval,"he said coolly."I am the Field Executive of I.T.O..To my right is my father, Phillip Duval, the CEO. To my le-"

Arthur was on his back, watching the clouds in a daze from the roundhouse right David lashed out.

"That was for my son Simon,"David said in a menacing voice.

Nearby SecuriMunk squads converged within firing range of David, but Phillip waved them off."Stand down, troops."he said to them. The squads lowered the arms but stood vigil, regardless.

"Hello, Mr. Seville. I must admit that you look much better as a Chipmunk than as a furless, savage cretin,"Phillip said."But I do regret what happened to your son on Science Island. My son can be very passionate about the cause."He glanced at still prone Arthur."Too passionate, at times. Yet thanks to your son's and Miss Jeanette's help, we were able to get much closer to our goal than we could have on our own."

Beatrice fired a harsh stare at him."You terrorists kidnapped our children. They'd never help you unless you forced them to, you coward!"

"Old woman, we stand at the cusp of a great change. For the universal betterment of the Chipmunk People and their birthright of supremacy, sons and daughters can and would be sacrificed as often as needed to achieve that goal. Including yours."

"Does Arthur, here, count?"she shot back.

"He understands."

Phillip looked down to see his son starting to stand up unsteadily. Arthur made the mistake of looking in the direction of The Roaming Eyes' faces. The ghosts of amusement played across them to his private shame. He was about to consider what his father had said about sacrifice and the cause when he heard the horns.

From all around the clearing, appearing from every tree canopy and every trunk, stepped partially armored Chipmunks. From their number, a female clad in a stately dress that matched her bearing, fearlessly strode with her escort, towards I.T.O. and their prisoners, sunlight catching in her raven-black hair.

"Stand down,"Phillip commanded his SecuriMunks. 

The female stopped when she reached captives and captors and regarded them with equal interest."Good morrow to you. Your arrival was well-timed. Well-timed, indeed."Captives and captors were both puzzled by all of this.

She motioned to one of her bodyguards and the knight raised an animal horn to his lips and blew. From the sharp note, a growing ring of Chipmunk knights wearing greenish-silver breastplates done in leaf filigree and soft, quick leather, encircled the whole of I.T.O.'s entourage, outnumbering them easily. She then faced her guests again.

"Her Majesty, Queen Winna, is expecting you most urgently,"she said.

"Queen?"Beatrice finally managed to say, though no more enlightened now than the rest.

"Yes, matron,"the female replied."My name is Nira, loyal retainer to Queen Winna IV."She then turned to face the multitude and said to them."Everyone, welcome to EverSpring." 


	5. Chapter Five

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Chapter Five

The carracs, or air boats, moved in formation high above the tree line with a quiet hum, powered by some unseen motivation that confounded some of Nira's guests' ability to guess at.

Simon, Jeanette and Arthur were each hard pressed to explain it and Theodore could hear them engage in spirited talk on the subject.

He leaned against the railing of the craft's observation deck and watched the clouds move in their own formations. The ride was so tranquil for him, that only the slight rocking from a cross-current breeze reminded him of motion.

All around him, his eyes fell on scenic beauty in abundance, above and below. Misted valleys and incandescent cataracts flowing from proud mountains. Farms spanning from open, sloping flatlands in orderly patterns that caught his eye. Vast tracts of forests, green and hearty, girdling soft, blue and glittering lakes blessed with whatever life he could only imagine.

The easy smile that flowed across his face surprised him a little. He was more convinced a while ago that it was going to end badly for him and the others. Now, as the wind ruffled the fur on his face, he started to feel incredibly like a native coming home from a long exile.

The sun and the scents in the breeze and the sweet, spicy odor of the woods that made up the carrac he rode, stimulated him with their unfamiliarity. Energized him in spite of his still present misgivings about the situation he and the others were still in. In some way, the whole of this experience began to anchor him emotionally to this land very quickly. This land of Chipmunks.

Theodore thought about scenic beauty absently again and found that he was looking at Eleanor and couldn't readily look elsewhere. Inside, he felt locked like a piece of steel in the allure of a lodestone. With a sigh, he patted the pocket that held the silver bracelet and turned back to the vista. The time still wasn't right yet, he felt.

Arthur felt that with the exception of Jeanette, he and I.T.O. had seen way too much of both The Chipmunks and The Chipettes. Especially Simon, whom Arthur was pleasantly fantasizing about pitching over the side of the deck into the sweet by-and-by.

For now, however, he had to settle for listening to him talk, or prattle, as Arthur would have called it.

"If there's no power source, then it might be some natural property of the woods that make it up," Jeanette said.

"Anti-gravitic wood?" scoffed Simon amiably. "Nonsense. I believe there is a power plant on board. Just silent, if anything."

Jeanette struck a thoughtful pose and tried a different tact. "Maybe. Then again the laws of physics may work differently in this world. Maybe the carrac's structure is essentially light-weight with powerful lighter-than-air gases held and pumped into strategic chambers for lift like a nautilus, y'know?"

"It hardly matters," Arthur cut in. "Counter-gravitic craft are just the thing the MunkTechs will need to tear into to understand."

"And exploit," Simon shot at him.

Arthur visibly strained to ignore the barb. "I doubt these people have ever heard of patents. For the sake of diplomacy, we'll only reverse engineer one of their lesser used ones."

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Spoken like a true conqueror, Jeanette thought darkly. "Why bother?" she blurted out. "You didn't feel too diplomatic when you stole Simon's computer and tortured him."

"That was because is in his case, we simply took advantage of his inherent weakness to its maximum effect," Arthur replied, cooled and matter-of-factly. "These people have no discernable weaknesses as of yet."

A twinge of pain sang in her stomach. "How can you be so cold-blooded, Arthur? So hateful?"

She glanced over to Simon, who regarded Arthur with equal frigidity. "That's alright, Jeanette. Arthur's a trained one-trick pony and his cronies are a bunch of vampires, taking more than they could ever produce from the world. Like a parasite."

With a look of hot emotion in his face, Arthur stepped up to Simon, hands turning into eager fists, but Jeanette moved in between the two, watching out for an audience.

"And parasites have their weaknesses, too," Simon said, his gray eyes turning harder and cooler in _his_ readiness to attack.

"You may not find _mine_ in your lifetime, Simple Simon."

"Please, you two," Jeanette pleaded in a whispered hiss. "Let's just not say anything for the rest of the trip, okay?" The two males backed off reluctantly when they saw one or two of the Autumnal Guard glance their way disapprovingly.

The debate on the carrac's propulsion ended as quickly as it started, with Simon always looking for the chance to maneuver himself between Arthur and Jeanette, either in the conversation or physically. As far as Arthur was concerned, at any rate.

He knew that simply talking with them...with _her, wasn't_ going to garner any trust or even grudging admiration from them, but he expected that from his enemies.

And enemies they were. They did far more than meddle, all of them. They disrupted and destroyed, wrecked and ruined. In his mind, they, and even Jeanette, in her own way, would pay the price for that.

He stroked his chin and upon painful contact, remembered David striking him. In the back of his mind, he counted himself lucky that David was somehow transformed into a Chipmunk before he hit him. A blow, full-tilt, with Human strength behind it, would have been devastating.

It was a bit difficult to understand the Human's behavior that prompted the hit. Did David think he was a Chipmunk in some way that he needed to defend Simon? He wasn't even his blood son. Did all of that, in some perverse irony, bring about David's change? Would it account for the old Human, Miss Miller, as well?

They were abominations in Arthur's mind, not purebreds like everyone else. For Miss Beatrice Miller, he would make it a mercy killing; she couldn't fathom the joy of being a member of his noble species. However, for David..._His_ death for touching him would be interesting to come up with.

Well, he figured, time enough for such things as vengeance. The Archive had done the miraculous, the impossible, by leading I.T.O. here, and its usefulness was far from over. The weapon, the power to defeat the Humans, was somewhere in this beautiful, verdant land. The hunt alone would be thrilling and The Archive would find it for them.

As a consequence, he glanced over to Jeanette, his heart aching when he saw her emerald eyes glow in the sun and the wind play with her rich brown hair. Her beauty was striking, no matter the setting.

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Yes, he thought. _Time enough for all such things._

At another end of the deck, a small crowd gathered around Nira made up of David, Alvin and Brittany on one side, and Phillip and The Roaming Eyes on the other. Both groups busied her by asking her rapid-fire questions while she stood with a nominal contingent of guards nearby.

"We detected an odd sound pattern coming from The Garden of The Green Gate," she explained.

"You mean that place we just left?" asked Brittany.

"Yes, young Brittany. We were commanded to go there and convey our Lady's wishes should we find anyone coming from The Gate. She seemed to know that someone might be arriving from there before _we_ knew."

David took another look at the moving vista. "Are we going to see her now?" Then he once again felt self-conscious at hearing the sound of his new voice. He was just not used to hearing those high-pitched vocalizations come from him and _not _attribute it to helium.

"Yes, sir-"

"David, please," he entreated politely. She stopped, feeling a bit off-track and curiously pleased to know that he wasn't the kind to put on airs, as did so many others who had in the past.

"As you wish...David."

Alvin and Brittany watched these exchanges silently, but also gave each other knowing glances.

"Well, anyway," she continued, trying to breeze the moment away," This craft, The Royaleen Carrac,is the fastest in the skies." She began to trail off while watching the wind move the white, over-sized shirt David wore like a flowing, majestic robe and tussle his hair, making him look both angelic and a bit roguish. She almost forgotten the question.

"We'll reach the capital very soon," she stammered demurely. "Her Majesty has granted all of you a private audience and she's very eager to meet you."

David seemed oblivious to what was going on inside Nira, but felt more than a little floored by all the attention they were getting. It looked bad at first, but now things were looking relatively better. Now, if he could just figure out how to reverse his and Miss Miller's condition and get both of their families out of all this.

"Wow, we're sure getting popular," he said. "We left one kingdom and wound up in another." Then he heard Nira gasp.

"You left your king or queen?" she quickly asked, worry lining her soft face. "Will you be missed? Were you needed? What was your station? Do you have a title? We certainly had no idea that you served your own lord or lady and was taken from him or her! W-We could have arranged a diplomatic meeting-"

Smiling, David held up his furred hands to calm her. "Whoa, whoa! Take it easy, Miss. I didn't mean I served a king or anything. I'm just the manager of two singing groups. My sons', The Chipmunks, and Miss Miller's daughters', The Chipettes."

Nira said nothing for a few seconds. She was certain she understood some of what he said and did calm down, but she found it difficult to turn away from his eyes for a moment.

"See, we were going to perform for a college buddy of mine, King Rudi of Bulgravia, when we were brought here." David concluded.

"I see," she said hesitantly, then added quietly, "And you may call me Nira."

"Okay, Nira"

Alvin and Brittany glanced knowingly towards each other some more.

Until then, Phillip had been patiently waiting, letting the rest fire off, from his opinion, one inane question after another. Now it was his turn to ask, in his estimation, the right questions.

"What about military hierarchies?" he asked brusquely. "Technological and strategic strengths?"

Among those who secretly questioned why Phillip would ask such things, David took the most umbrage. Asking about military strength right after transporting a small, yet functional army with him? All of that hardware and support?

None too subtly, he sounded like he wanted to get the lay of the land before conquering it. Judging from that, David concluded that his friends and family had just stumbled into the embryo of an invasion. He spoke up fast.

"Nira, not to tell you your job or anything, but it might be best not to answer that," he offered, as diplomatically as his worry allowed. Then he gestured lightly towards Phillip. "They kidnapped my family and friends. We didn't come here willingly and that army he brought might be used to take over your world."

He paused to study Phillip's reaction and tensed inside. He expected to hear a violent response from him or an order to his nearby bodyguards to punish David for his statement.

But there wasn't so much as a threat, veiled or overt, sent to the elder Seville. Phillip and The Roaming Eyes looked at him, bewildered and bemused, and _that_ worried David to no end.

"Well, if the 'general' here is quite through," one of The Roaming Eyes replied to no one in particular, "He might be pleased to know that we were _expected_ to come here with our army."

"Why?" David charged, forgetting that he had no way of making them talk if they so chose. "Who's expecting you? The Queen?

"Why, yes," Nira interjected brightly. "Very much so. With her blessing."

David looked to her, his new face creased in a mix of worry, concern and confusion, but _her _face maintained that pleasant optimism that reminded him of a lamb before its slaughter. He sighed and said no more on the subject.

The trip took, on the whole, little more than an hour, and Alvin and Brittany were soon pointing at the horizon-blotting canopy of the Super Tree.

"That thing is huge," Brittany said.

"That's what the girls tell me," Alvin said slyly, watching her to see if she had gotten the joke. One slap upside his head a second later showed that she did.

Still a fair distance from the tree, its size made it look as though they were going to collide with a green mountainside.

The rest of Nira's group took their places along the railing to get their own views of the sight, as magnificent a vision as Nature could create.

The blue ribbon of a river ran from under the black maw of a tunnel of titanic, imposing roots and the clearing where the tree grew was, although grassy and lush, devoid of any smaller, common trees for close to five miles in every direction, as if the rest of the surrounding woods gave the mammoth plant a very wide berth.

It seemed just as well, for everything below the all-encompassing canopy was dim, blocked of any reasonable sunlight during certain times of the day.

The trunk was huge for such a living thing. Its relatively squat circumference could have held the equivalent of a mid-sized forest in its girth. As the carrac descended closer, the onlookers could just start making out in the distance activity and slight movement within the tree itself from tiny windows and openings carved from the massive armor of the bark wall. To either side and in various levels of descent and ascent were the orderly inbound/outbound traffic of other carracs, carrying either passengers or cargo.

Theodore was particularly awestruck by the Super Tree's majesty, presence and sheer impossibility of being real.

"What _is_ that?" he asked under his breath.

"It's beautiful," Eleanor joined.

Nira, who had just heard them, stood at the head of the observation deck, answering with unabashed reverence. "This is our capital, young ones. Arbomagnus, The Great Green Father and the high seat of power for Her Majesty, Queen Winna the Fourth."

She knelt down to one knee, head down, arms outstretched with her eight fingers spread. Around the guests, every Autumnal GuardsMunk followed her in supplication.

As one, the guests knew that they were paying homage to the tree and so kept quiet as their carrac drifted closer and downward towards the titanic trunk, their surroundings becoming darker and cooler as they entered the seemingly endless shade of the massive tree.

After another minute, Nira and the knights stood again and she regarded them with a look as though what just happened wasn't too terribly profound.

"It's what we do," she said simply.

Nira's guests wondered what else she and the other natives would do as they were reaching the large, circular opening of the royal carrac hangar bay and the shroud of shade from the Super Tree closed in around them all.

Theodore had been in airports before and had seen their hangars from time to time at a distance. This gave him some general impressions of places like that. He carried those impressions as he disembarked with the others from the berthed craft to stand on the balcony that overlooked the expanse of the bay.

However, what he saw of the bay put his generalizations into conflict. Although a fully-functioning hangar and service area, it was also a vision of architectural beauty. Curved, support beams of wood weaved and flowed around and among the depths of work space that cradled the carrac. Even the uniforms of the work crews added to the overall look of natural and utilitarian elements within.

No matter how airy and busy the bay was, however, the Autumnal Guard that rode with him reminded him that the element of foreboding and intrigue was still in his and the others' future. And it made it all the cloudier by it.

There wasn't much time for proper orientation after the carrac was berthed. Just enough for a hasty course in etiquette concerning how to behave in Queen Winna's presence.

As they marched behind Nira, she led them to the carved doors that separated the bay from whatever laid beyond.

"After Queen Winna is finished with you, I shall endeavor to give you a proper tour of Arbomagnus," Nira said, manipulating the large, secure lock. "Until then, stay with me and don't lag behind. I wouldn't want you to get lost."

With that, the doors swung out and away and the guests stepped through and into the unexpected.

The cacophony of living hit them hard as they stepped out into a wide, curving promenade and vendor's market. Well-lit from strategically placed crys-lamps, they could see vines lacing the lower walls and high ceiling.

All around them, Chipmunks of almost every social strata hustled and chattered freely and busily. Males and females milled about, engaged in their various businesses or social pleasures, catching the guests' eyes with their styles of local dress. Some random assortments of Chipmunks of either sex would notice their gender counterparts in the group of newcomers and would throw them a friendly smile, wink or nod to the slightly hidden chagrin of their traveling companions.

It was a pleasant shock to Nira's charge. The times in their lives when they encountered so many of their species at once was so distressingly rare that moments like now became indelible in them. At least for all but two of them.

For just as telling, just as compelling, was the sheer _absence_ of Humans. Totally. The truth of this hit David and Miss Miller noticeably that their species simply didn't exist here.

For their foster children and their I.T.O. "hosts", there was nothing to detect, either casually or by intent. No Human scents or colors, none of their sizes or idiosyncrasies. It was as if everyone around the two of them were awakening for a life-long dream of Man and his ways. To David and Miss Miller, they felt like ghosts and it felt more than a little eerie.

From the squeaking hub-bub of the area, Nira led them down a small, branching corridor that led them to a bank of wooden and metal-caged elevators on the far side of the hall. She pulled out a key, opened the door to one of them and bade them enter with her.

"This private lifter will take us to the royal levels of Arbomagnus," she explained as they ascended silently.

The car opened to reveal a floor of stark difference from the one they left. It was a little less busy and congested with Chipmunks but very ornate and its patrons' appearances reflected that.

The hall was a beautiful fusion of Nature and opulence. Mirror-polished floors of wood reflected the brilliance of crys-lamp chandeliers that hung high in curved, vaulted ceilings.

Polished corridors branched away from the main hall at either side, leading to private chambers, offices, dining halls and wardrooms. Smaller but no less tasteful, they displayed informational cuneiforms touched with gild on the smoothly sloped walls.

Everywhere, they saw Chipmunk courtiers, advisors, representative nobility and perfumed courtesans strolling here and there, involved in either their duties or dubious enterprises, while Autumnal GuardsMunks stood at various locations throughout in quiet attention.

At the far end of the hall stood a pair of high double doors, ornamented in gold and protected by two rows of GuardsMunks in full heavy-plate armor and brandishing wickedly fashioned weapons.

"The throne room is past these doors," Nira said in a hush. No one in her group could believe this. A world entirely of Chipmunks, flying boats, a giant tree that held the very queen that ruled it all. It would have made for excellent fiction if their feet didn't feel the floor beneath them, their noses didn't breathe in the perfumes and scents of the unfamiliar around them and their eyes didn't take in all the wonder the architecture provoked.

They walked silently past the grim knights, glancing at their armor and weapons with greater clarity. They looked impressive and dangerous.

Nira and the group reached the doors and she regarded the liveried male standing before them. Both greeted each other quietly and then he turned and entered the throne room.

"Remember," she breathed nervously, "Be on your best behavior and don't forget what I told you." She heard sounds of acknowledgement from the group, then the doors parted and they walked through.


	6. Chapter Six

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Chapter Six

A high domed ceiling. A natural stone dais. A stately fish pond. And a forested garden that circled the entire chamber...

Within, breaths caught in their chests as David, Miss Miller and Earth's Chipmunks saw the interior of the throne room. Its design was a beautiful departure from the more earthly examples they were used to seeing.

Most of the advisors and courtiers within took glanced yet immediate notice when Nira and her charge walked by. Their expressions ranged from the curious to the disdainful at the newcomers' appearances, but their voices died down to murmurs at their approach.

Up ahead, Nira's group could intuitively see the one element that tied the entire chamber together and dominated it at once.

A dark wood and ivy-laced throne sat in the center of the dais, far forward of them and the fish pond, on the other end of the chamber. Its sides were intricately carved with the markings of that world, carefully detailing the long lineage of the one who now sat upon it. Behind it, draped high on the wall the throne rested before, was a large, colorful pendant with EverSpring's symbol, a deep green silhouette of Arbomagnus, embroidered in its center.

Queen Winna was, in spite of her delicate raiment, a classic beauty. Soft, red hair curled and flowed over and around her head and comely face like crimson waves and was crowned with a wreath diadem woven around fat, brilliant gems. Her raiment was silken, translucent and flattered her noticeably toned body well with its shimmering greens, aquamarines and gold.

Nira told them to stay by the crowd and wait. Then she strode purposefully past the court and around the central pond to face the dais. She bowed deeply to the reclining queen above her.

"Arise, trusted Nira," Winna said pleasantly. "Have they come as was told?"

Nira raised her head, returning the smile, and said," They have, My Queen. The Children of The Explorers have returned. The Princebane may have come with the as well."

The queen perked up at the mention of the word, Princebane, and all looks of imperious dignity was replaced with undisguised hope in her eyes.

"Who? Which one is the bane?" she asked in an excited whisper.

The look in Nira's eyes answered the queen before she could."I don't know, Your Majesty," she said in a low voice."But if everything else has happened according to Writ, then he or she will be there with them."

Winna mulled it over for some seconds. Then she rose to address the court directly.

"I wish to speak with the newcomers. Everyone else may go until I have need of you."

The court as one bowed and began emptying the throne room. Nira turned to leave, but Winna spoke."Don't go, Nira. I may need you to help evaluate them."Nira bowed in acceptance.

When the last courtier left the double doors, Winna sat again and motioned the group forward. They walked ahead with tentative steps, conscious of every action and fearing an accidental faux pas.

Although they watched the queen with more of less averted eyes, their main attention was focused on Nira, who was coaching them with her eyes and subtle moves of her hands.

When they reached a few feet from the base of the dais, they all bowed simultaneously.

"Children of destiny. Children of the world of Sanctuary, welcome to EverSpring, your true home,"Winna said to them.

Gradually, they raised their eyes to her. Saw the newborn hope in her face.

"I know this all seems so unfamiliar and sudden for you. I can only apologize, but your return was inevitable and of the direst of reasons,"she said.

The queen's audience's faces grew darker with apprehension. Just what were they in the middle of?

"Our beautiful world is in the grip of a war."

Their hearts descended to their stomachs in record time.

"Most of our history has been a long struggle to hold back extinction itself,"said Winna,"And I'm afraid that our history will end all too soon. The forces of The Splintered One aren't content with sabotage, hit and run attacks and random hunts anymore. Whole villages are now being emptied and our people are dwindling in numbers."She fought to keep the strain from her voice, the demons of doubt from her heart. She forced a congenial smile.

"You see, our forces, while strong, just aren't strong enough to repel the constant attacks. However, a quick thrust into the heart of their power could turn the tide for us, and for that, we need help. Your help."

Every representative of I.T.O. was curiously unperturbed by all of this, which was in strong contrast to the others. Arthur took an obsequious step forward, looking fairly smug.

"Your Majesty, my father, our forces and I will not fail you or our people, now or ever, because, as you well know..."He glanced to the others, Simon and Jeanette particular."It was preordained."

He slid The Archive out from under his arm and presented to her with a deep bow. He was about to walk up to give it to Nira for closer presentation to Queen Winna, when Nira stopped his approach with a raised hand."We have our own, The Courtly Archive, but thank you, Young Arthur."

Arthur's face flashed from self-satisfaction to deep dismay and inner confusion. Surely The Archive was unique, one-of-a-kind, he figured. Not so, apparently. Not _here, _at any rate. He covered his befuddlement with graciousness in an instant."I'm sorry. Where we come from, this book is a veritable treasure of our history and very unique,"he said.

Nira perked at a thought."Actually, you could be right. That copy _would_ be quite special, considering the fact that the Explorers might have added on to the original text to chronicle what they did while on Sanctuary."

"Sanctuary, ma'am?"

"The name of the world you come from. A long time ago, it was a place that was well named for us."

Winna brightened at that. A moment's curiosity was a welcome change from the current topic of her domain's troubles.

"Oh, yes! You all come from Sanctuary, I almost forgot. And as children of The Explorers of Sanctuary, you must tell us what it's like there. We could read from The Archive you have, but it wouldn't be the same as a real accounting of the world _after_ it was settled. The creatures, the scenery, the world, itself. Please regale us."

Everyone in the group began to realize that Winna was most cordial and as regally gregarious as she could be. What she asked wasn't a command, but a simple question to satisfy a very understandable need. They began to relax inside by degrees and looked at her with pleasant surprise.

Nira turned to the queen, saying,"I was planning to give them a tour of Arbomagnus proper after their audience with you, Your Highness. If it pleases you, could they tell you of their home afterwards? After they have been settled in?"

Winna thought about it for a moment, then said graciously,"I'm sure they've all traveled hard and we must see to their every comfort while they are here and assisting us."She stood and addressed the entire group."Everyone, the halls of Arbomagnus are open to you."Then added with a welcoming smile that couldn't hide the ghost of sadness in it,"Welcome home."

Theodore stepped out of the suite that was loaned to his family, feeling more refreshed and relaxed then he had when he first arrived. The hot shower, the filling repast of vegetable dishes sent to him, and the clean change of clothes may have had something to do with it.

He went across the opulent corridor to The Miller's suite and knocked. He wanted to make sure everyone was present during Nira's tour since he didn't see his brothers or father minutes before.

The door opened and he felt like gelatin. Eleanor stood under the doorway, her blonde hair undone and flowing around her shoulders and back like a shimmering ghost.

"Oh, hi, Theodore. Come in. I'll be ready in a minute," she invited.

Theodore was relieved that she didn't ask him for anything, he couldn't manage anything more coherent than, "Uh, o-okay," as he entered.

He saw her walk to a cheval mirror nearby, then she began to primp and straighten the dress she was given and her hair.

"You look nice," he blurted out. It sounded friendly enough, but couldn't help being forced from a case of nerves.

Eleanor looked at him through the mirror, surprised and with a slight smile. Theodore was becoming an unexpected enigma to her. She was sure, before then, that he was either avoiding her outright or just keeping a clumsy, yet gentlemanly-reasoned distance from what seemed like strong advances from her. Now he began to show a side of himself that, if called rare, would be putting it kindly.

"Thank you," she demurely said, and as she looked down, she could see Theodore's hand hover and then pat at his pocket for a moment. '_What was in there?' _she wondered. '_What was he hiding?'_

The question was shelved when she remembered that there was no one else in the suite but the two of them. A pleasant anxiety made her change the subject.

"The rest of our families are with Nira, but don't know if I should go out looking like this," she said with a mock-innocent voice while letting flaxen rivers of her hair run through her fingers. 

She was flirting, she knew, and the playful teasing of her loosely styled hair had a near hypnotic effect on her target. All the time, she never turned to talk to him while she stood at the mirror. Turning her body from one admiring angle to another, she secretly watched his reflection's reaction to her seemingly innocent display and was pleased with the results. He was fidgeting for certain, but he didn't exactly excuse himself, either.

"Ellie?"

"Yes, Theodore."

"Do you think we'll get out of here?"

The question caught her by surprise. It certainly wasn't the kind of question she might have expected from him at the moment and it took her a few seconds to switch tracks.

"Um, I hope so. I'd like to think so, anyway. Why'd you ask?"

"No reason, I guess," Theodore said. "I just figured that if we didn't get back, worse comes to worst, we might have to start over, here. I'm thinking about striking out as a chef or maybe start my own restaurant or tavern or whatever they have here. The band can't be my whole life."

Eleanor left the mirror and sat on the couch Theodore occupied, a few inches from him. "You're right. It can't be."

Theodore got more comfortable and actually looked at her fully with a curious twinkle. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" he asked with a quirky smile.

A smile that proved infectious as Eleanor turned her head away self-consciously. Another surprise from him, this spontaneity. She couldn't understand why her cheeks warmed, why she felt younger than she was. Was it the question or the questioner?

Theodore leaned over, his face close to hers, interested in seeing the expression she was hiding. Eleanor, not expecting Theodore to be so close to her, was startled by the sound of his breath in her ear and turned to him.

"I..." That was all she had time to say before her lips brushed for the merest of seconds across Theodore's and felt paralyzed.

It wasn't a kiss, as such, but the touch was electric and transfixed them solid. Their stare was locked, eyes to eyes, frozen, anxious and mindless. Except for a single impulse that was their puppeteer and drew their lips closer.

One inch...a quarter inch...a third...their whispered breath mingling hot.

__

Knock, knock, knock...

The spell that held them flew from them like birds to the sound from the door. Theodore blinked the interrupted away and scooted a few inches away from Eleanor, just as she, likewise, put some distance from him.

"Y-Yes?" she said, trying to compose herself.

Nira's voice floated from the other side of the door. "Young Eleanor, is Theodore in there with you?"

Eleanor hesitated for a second before answered. She saw her indecision and worry of being caught in an indelicate situation mirrored in Theodore, but it would have been bad form to lie to a host, especially if caught in the lie, somehow.

"Uh, yes, ma'am. He came over to lift me up-"

Theodore winced badly.

Eleanor felt like jumping out of a window for that gaff. "Uh, er...I-I mean to pick me up, Miss Nira." She looked apologetically to Theodore as he walked over to the door. He took a calming breath and opened.

"Hello, ma'am."

"Hello, young Theodore. Are you and Eleanor ready for the tour?"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry we held you up," he said as he stepped out into the corridor and deferentially looked down the hall.

Eleanor followed suit, but just as she crossed the threshold and passed Nira, she caught a look from Nira that was ambivalent, at best. Half disapproving and half admiringly amused.

Eleanor reached Theodore and performed the selfsame, self-conscious stare up ahead. Nira, now every inch the chaperone, arrived behind them and with a cordial voice, gestured forward.

"Shall we?" she offered, then she marched them off with a knowing smirk.

The itinerary weaved Nira and her group through a good number of areas in Arbomagnus, as she promised. Most were public, a few, more private, like Sword Hall, where the domain's armed forces trained under the tintinnabulations of sword strikes and the harsh commands of battle-hardened instructors, and gave their oaths of service.

Or The Chambers of The Measurers, Arbomagnus' answer to a colossal Think Tank, holding the greatest philosophers, scientists, engineers and mathematicians EverSpring ever produced, and displaying their greatest achievements to date.

Or The Gardens of The Wood, a vast, bucolic farm complex, complete with native livestock, that took up eight levels and almost all of the width of Arbomagnus' interior to house, providing food for all of the citizenry of the massive tree.

It wasn't until later that day, that the group returned to the world outside of the Super Tree from a stair cased, well-guarded entrance at root level. The sun sat at an angle in the sky that brightened their area of the clearing under the tree. It also illuminated the hundred or so faces that stood in a crowd, anxious to meet The Children of The Explorers. 

A contingent of GuardsMunks that traveled with Nira and her charge during the tour quickly took defensive positions to the sides and ahead of them, acting like a buffer against any overzealous well-wishers. When Theodore and the others were seen, they were hit with applause and adulation that rivaled the most enthusiastic response to any public appearance they may have garnered back home.

Nira looked apologetic to her group. _'So much for a quiet tour,'_ she thought. "Word must have leaked out about you after we left Her Highness," she explained to them.

"Hey, no sweat. We go through this kind of thing all the time," Brittany dismissed, not bothering to mention the veritable thrill it gave _her_ every time she found herself in such situations.

Eleanor looked at the various faces that looked back at her and the others, incredulously. They were here not for the excitement of being near celebrities or for frivolous entertainment. These were the common folk, the populace and the backbone that supported the lofty that governed them. In their eyes they held no agenda, nothing but the hope they ascribed onto her and the others that the war would end and resign itself to its place in history.

"Is this for us?" Eleanor asked Nira after she caught her breath from the reality of she saw in front of her.

"Yes, Eleanor," Nira said solemnly. "They are why you are here. This is what you are doing and for whom. Not for the queen, not for me, not even for yourselves."

From one side of her, Nira heard Arthur say to his father, low and disdainful, "I don't believe they'd go through all of this. Although we can certainly offer far more for them than The Millers or The Sevilles ever could, prophecy or no prophecy."

"They do this to honor you," Nira explained, wondering why the boy would want to..._denigrate_...the very people who needed him so. Perhaps he was just tired. "I hope you can see that, young Arthur."

For diplomacy's sake, Arthur didn't tell her what he, and he knew, I.T.O. saw ahead of them. The milling masses were to him both beautiful, logical people whose need to cheer him and his people's might and power was a fundamental right, and, on the other hand, all too trusting, primitive, lacking any true purpose or focus, and essentially naive puppets of a sheltered, ineffectual queen.

He looked back to the audience with an oily, self-satisfied smile. "Forgive me, Mistress Nira. You're quite right. They _are_ honoring us. And when I.T.O. wins this bothersome war for you and your queen, the masses will see my people as the saviors they always set themselves out to be. When they cheer again, it will be most dutifully."

Nira cocked an eyebrow at that, but decided not to say anything further to the boy on the subject.

Jeanette regarded Nira a question. "Princebane, Miss Nira. I'm hearing some of the crowd saying that. Is that what we are?"

"Oh, no, Jeanette. Although The Archive tells of your return and the eventual defeat of The Splintered One, it doesn't make mention of who The Princebane is, other than the fact that it travels with The Children of The Explorers."

"What does this Princebane do, exactly?" Simon asked while giving the occasional wave to the throng.

Nira thought about that for a moment, then answered. "No one truly knows. While everyone will have something to contribute to The Splintered One's destruction, only the actions of The Princebane will ensure total victory."

"Then, I guess we won't know who that is until it's over," Theodore said simply.

"Indeed," Nira agreed.

Eleanor counted herself lucky that no one noticed her slipping away from the group just then. The soft sounds of nature, no matter how alien or familiar, soothed her and worked towards making her forget her pending obligations to this world.

She didn't want to seem ungrateful to Nira for the more than gracious hospitality shown as she sauntered away from them, but she wanted to take in the beauty of the place without a travelogue or her friends and family breathing down her neck in a group.

She casually glanced upward at the faint, distant caws of what had to be the flying fauna of the world. Too far to be discerned by sight, they appeared as black specks drifting in lazy, circular formations in the blue sky.

Eleanor found herself thinking about vacationing again. It was a passing thought, as were the previous times, but she didn't dismiss it out of hand, either. They all needed some downtime. Now, more than ever.

As the distance from the others grew, thoughts began to unhinge themselves from her control and float up to the forefront. Would they ever make it home again? Was this some super-realistic dream that caught her unawares in her dressing room back in Bulgravia due to overwork?

On Earth, the belief in the existence of other worlds was what one had to prove his or her open-mindedness to others, even if no such proof was ever offered.

If the air she was breathing and the ground she was walking upon and, more importantly, if the jarring, open-mouthed shrieks from a group of deep green, fern covered bird-things screaming towards her were real in any way, then those open-minded folk back on Earth just paid an amazing amount of lip service.

In her screams and through the whirlwind flurry of green movement, Eleanor noticed with dread shock that the number of attackers matched the number of flyers she saw moments before. Judging from their size, roughly seven feet in length, they were powerfully built.

She quickly hoped that this attack was due to her wandering into some territory that only the creatures acknowledged or disturbing some earthbound nests. She could simply run back to Nira and the others if that was the case, because if they were birds of prey on a hunt...

On the arrival of the beasts, however, the crowd, as one, scattered to any avenue of safety available in a loud, chaotic panic. 

Despite the confusing storm of the mob, unsheathed GuardsMunks, The Millers and The Sevilles rushed to Eleanor with fear-borne speed. Three of the four fern-like birds, called, aptly enough, _fern-flyers_, by the guards present, left the fourth to Eleanor while they swooped low or landed and snapped fiercely at her defenders.

Eleanor was close enough to hear the GuardsMunks tell the others to go back for safety's sake, but predictably, they began to fan out instead, simultaneously distracting the three flyers and trying to outflank them so as to get a shot at the lone flyer with Eleanor.

Eleanor brought up her arms to try and ward off the leafy growths as they brushed and pressed against her. Every time she tried to sidestep or outrun her antagonist, the fern-flyer would seemingly anticipate the move while jockeying for a position to use its wickedly thorned talons.

Theodore yelled over and over, waving his arms in wide arcs and hoping to frighten away the closest fern-flyer, just as the others did. His mind maddeningly debated between staying and distracting the beasts, and maybe the GuardsMunks getting to the one with Eleanor, and going to her, himself.

A thrown stone that connected to the head of one of the fern-flyers caused that one to turn and join its partners momentarily, clearing the way between Theodore, Eleanor and her attacker. With an adrenaline and fear-fueled jolt and not much else, his mind blanked and he charged.

Eleanor managed to catch a few quick glimpses of Theodore approaching dangerously close and tearing copious handfuls of fern-feathers from the creature's flank and left wing.

__

'Come on,' Theodore thought desperately._ 'I know this hurts you, so turn away from Ellie and attack me! Please!'_

The bird-thing _did_ buck under the torturous plucking it received, rewarding Theodore with pained, occasional snaps at him, but it, too, was determined on staying with Eleanor.

"No! Look out, Theodore!" Eleanor warned as the fern-flyer lunged its woody beak out at him again, making Theodore defensively jump back.

Eleanor raised her arm again to ward off another wing buffet when she suddenly felt that arm get gripped in a frighteningly strong hold. In her shock, she looked up to see the fern-flyer now hovering just above her, her arm held securely in one of its powerful talons, the thorns from it, parting the soft fur and breaking the skin slightly.

In pain, she brought her other arm up to try and free herself, but then felt herself jerked upward as the second talon snatched that arm and the fern-flyer began to take off.

With a sharp screech, it rocketed up and Eleanor could hear Theodore's anguished yells grow fainter with each wing beat. The other fern-flyers, hearing the signal from their airborne partner, took off without preamble.

The rest of The Millers and The Sevilles rushed to where Theodore numbly stood, centered around a loose blanket of fern-feathers and speckled with drops of sap-like blood from where he pulled them free.

"Theodore, are you all right?" David blurted out in a breath.

"Yeah," his son said with precious little emotion, still staring out at the swift specks soaring and taking a bearing for the horizon.

Miss Miller turned to one of the GuardsMunks with a face twisted in hysterics. "I want my daughter back! Get her! Get her back! Go get her!" She couldn't say any more after that because she collapsed to the earth, weeping inconsolably.

"We will do everything that's in our power, Mistress Miller," the GuardsMunk said, willing her to believe him. He had seen attacks like this and it was never good nor did it ever end well for the victims. "Please, Mistress, we must return to Arbomagnus. It's safer there and we can prepare a search for you child."

He motioned for two of his company to help her up and escort her back. When he turned back to the direction of Nira and the others, it was in time to see another war in the making.

Both families partially encircled Arthur and Phillip, not particularly concerned that a couple of nearby SecuriMunks forming a personal guard, began maneuvering between father and son, and everyone else.

"You really should think about what you're doing, people," Philip said drolly. "I would truly hate for my guards to come to any misunderstandings about your intentions."

"Stuff it, pal," Alvin shot back. "We needed your help over here. Why didn't you send your bookends to help us out?"

"Because my 'bookends', as you call them, answer to me and protect _only _me and my son. I would have thought that their absence from your little fracas would have made that apparent, even to you," came the frosty reply.

"You guys stink," Brittany growled, stepping up to Phillip. "That's my sister up there. You say that you're all about Chipmunks, but you're so full of it."

"In case you haven't been paying attention, Miss Miller, this world is in grip of a war and people die in wars. I read that somewhere."

"Our sister's not dead," Jeanette nearly shouted, her features dark.

"Well, if she's got a good head on her shoulders, she might just survive," Phillip said smoothly. "Otherwise, this doesn't concern I.T.O."

Before any of the guards could stop her, Brittany, with a rare speed, hauled off and punched Phillip solidly in his eye.

"I bet you're concerned now, huh?" she yelled defiantly as the SecuriMunks raised weapons.

Arthur tensed for a fight as Jeanette and all The Sevilles, save Theodore, move protectively around Brittany, preparing to rush the guards if they attempted to fire their ThunderGuns.

"Hold, or you will _all _be arrested!"

They all froze and turned to see Nira, her stately bearing, now seriously imperious and the growing number of GuardsMunks around her were making her threat very real.

"Your presence here is too important to everything here. What you do could change the very course of the war for us, and since any of you could be The Princebane, you will not bring harm to yourselves in _any _way. Fail to heed this and by The Great Green Father, you will suffer before our world does." She took a breath and released it, softening some, then she regarded The Millers.

"Brittany, Jeanette, I will inform Queen Winna personally of what happened and I will do everything I can to convince her to send a search party for Eleanor within the hour. I want you to be strong in the meantime. Can you?"

The anguish and fear never left the sisters' faces and Nira didn't expect it to, but they nodded with crushed acceptance.

David, sensing it was time to return to Arbomagnus, thought about gathering his sons and dealing with this new wave of troubles hitting his friends and family, when he noticed an absence of one of them.

He found Theodore where he was standing the entire time since the abduction, still watching the cloudless skies of the day, but not noticing that the fistful of fern-feathers his son was gripping was slowly being gripped tighter and tighter still.


	7. Chapter Seven

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Chapter Seven

"The fern-flyers were simply the beginning, Nira, the vanguard," Queen Winna told her and the assemblage before her throne.

Apart from a few advisors and three other Chipmunks Nira felt she couldn't be bothered to notice at the moment, the throne room was vacant enough that this private audience could be conducted without a lot of the nobility listening in and hatching plots that might, in someway, undermine the war effort to profit themselves politically. Besides, what they didn't know couldn't hurt them, Nira figured.

She stood before her charges, mustering every ounce of diplomacy she could to bend a decision she already knew was both coming and probably immutable. 

"Yes, Your Highness, but surely for them, you could dispatch a team of our High Hill Trackers to do a thorough search for young Eleanor. They're the finest born."

"All too true, and that is why they are all on missions at this moment, Nira. I sent them all to assist my Autumnal Guards in emergency seek and destroy actions. This was decreed right after I heard of poor Eleanor's capture," Winna explained, then she darkened suddenly.

"In the entire duration of the war, no enemy has ever attacked Arbomagnus and now The Splintered One...that wretched Prince, dares to visit harm to the very heart of my domain! I'll see him turned to kindling before my eyes, yet!"

All were silent. In the little time the otherworldly guests have known the queen, they haven't seen her in a foul mood, much less an inflamed one.

Graciousness and civility gave way to the stark reality one felt when in the presence of one who wielded absolute power, particularly during wartime. Any protests against Winna's decree had died in their minds, and quite frankly, no one wanted to follow them.

Winna raised a hand commandingly to The Millers, but spoke less so.

"Miller Family, come to me."

They obeyed, keeping their eyes averted for the most part, until they felt as one that they were close enough to the throne to satisfy protocol.

"See me."

They looked up to see someone who was well acquainted with great loss on and of a personal and private level. Winna softened her face with understanding, hoping that none of the them thought her heartless to abandon someone like their Eleanor. 

She inwardly began to drop her regal bearing and began to look tired and very worn, from decisions that made her lose sleep at times, from the knowledge that whole villages of innocents were either driven out or eliminated totally by an enemy as natural, as ruthless, as any predator, and from a single fact, a bitter stroke of truth that haunted her like Death itself.

"I grieve for your child, your sister, as deeply and as personally as you do." she said quietly, sadly, as if she were giving them a secret she would have never divulged otherwise. "I am the last of my line. I didn't have a litter, just the one child, and my consort and she were taken from me the same way. I never forgotten them." 

She straightened herself on the throne again, the monarch returning to her. "Death is the power behind my throne. Politically, with my death, a regency would have to be put in place to prevent a power vacuum during the war and the regent might not be as capable as I was in life. A true risk, to be sure. Personally, my loved ones' absence hurts and kills me a little each day."

The spirit of guilt settled quietly over the hearts of those who let those words touch them. The Sevilles and The Millers were learning more about this world than any tour could. They were learning its heart, learning its reality, its pain and its only hope. Through its queen, the full weight of the conflict could be felt, but never measured. Her loss was as crippling as theirs had been, and the work she put her whole life into doing would probably die with her. Like her people, her life, her loves and her legacy would be brutalized victims of The Splintered One, until, at long last, extinction would close its broad hand over all Chipmunks. Until even the very name_ Chipmunk,_ would have been as dust to the ages.

"Your Majesty," Jeanette said with as much deference as her emotions could allow her to say. "We understand. If we offended you or the memory of your loved ones, we're very, very sorry."

A sad smile graced the queen of Chipmunks. "Whatever for. There is nothing to forgive, little one. Nothing at all."

Winna looked out to the others with a fresh sense of determination. "As I said to you before, we fight against extinction itself. That means that everyone, _everyone_ must assist in the war effort. Including you." Then she called to the side of the throne room. "Representatives." 

Everyone began noticing the group of three Chipmunks dressed in formal ensembles of crimson, azure and emerald, coming from their place away from the audience and striding with quiet authority.

Winna gestured to them as they gathered at the side of her throne. "These are the representatives of the arms of my domain. The red one speaks for my military, the blue is my liaison to the scientific community, and the green representative is the voice of our healers and the caretakers of our natural resources to date. You will all work under one of them exclusively."

Each representative glided next to their future charge while Winna's audience watched them with misgivings concerning their immediate future.

"David Seville," Winna said. "You, your son, Alvin and Brittany have been chosen to enter service as part of The Warchanter Corps. I have heard that your skill in music is world renown where you are from and the children's' apparent spirit," she glanced to Phillip's darkened eye. "Makes it a sound decision."

David felt a none too comfortable twinge in his stomach at that. Although he had no idea what a Warchanter was, per se, anything with the word _corps_, especially in wartime, made him admittedly nervous. And what about the kids?

"Your Highness, I understand you need our help, but I'm not too sure about this. If I have to join, I will, but the kids are too young for whatever this Warchanter thing is," He protested anxiously.

"Not at all, Master Seville. They look to be in their middle youth, around their sixteenth year, at my reckoning, and with the losses of our warriors mounting, the young have been given the task to of helping defend the domain alongside the mature."

"Warriors? But-" 

She quickly brought her hand up in a dismissive gesture, ending further discussion. She then looked to an obviously pensive Phillip. "Since you command your own army, scientists and artificers, you are in a unique position. You will still work under a representative, two, in fact, the red and blue, however your forces will still be under your command. Your two advisors will also work under you and I have hear that your army has been brought here without incident and are awaiting you orders."

"I will do my level best," Phillip said simply. Simon, Jeanette and Arthur met the queen's gaze next. 

"Strength without mind cannot serve. Cannot serve _me_. I had the opportunity to look at some of the machines and devices that I.T.O. brought with them. They are truly miraculous, but beyond what my subjects can understand to any great extent. 

My advisors have told me that you three pursue the scholarly, therefore, Simon, you, Jeanette and Arthur will work with I.T.O. to create new devices and defenses to combat The Splintered One's forces. You may also have complete access to The Pool of Connection here in Arbomagnus to help you with your work if you desire."

The three subjects of her conversation glanced and glared at one another uncomfortably. Simon and Arthur particularly were grinding their teeth over the whole affair. Bad enough to be practically conscripted to the war by the female, but to have to work..._together_?

"Whatever vendettas you seem to have for yourselves, you will put them to rest in the shadow of our people's plight. Is that understood?" Winna said firmly.

Both adolescent males were about to wonder exactly how she knew about their mutual animosity, when both noticed that they stood facing each other, faces scowling and fists balled.

Simon turned to the queen, bowing and composing himself as he did so.

"My apologies, Your Highness," he said. "I am confident that _Jeanette_ and myself will endeavor to do our very best to help." He smiled inwardly, hoping the barb took effect on Arthur.

Arthur likewise bowed to Winna, saying, "Your most gracious Majesty, I can assure you that the entire technological resources of I.T.O. and myself, are at your complete and total disposal." He glanced at Simon to catch his reaction.

All of that disguised bickering was not lost on Queen Winna the Fourth, who had heard more vicious, honey-coated jabs and insults used by the members of her court against each other, than anyone else.

"Deeds, not words, gentlemunks." Then she dismissed them.

"Mistress Miller," Winna called to the eldest female. "You and young Theodore will be tasked with the duty of helping our healers in The Great Ward, our domain's largest hospice. It has been very busy as of late and we need all the hands we can to heal as many as possible." Winna then looked uncomfortable, knowing she would make a most painful mention. "I would have given the task of helping you, Mistress Miller, to your daughter, Eleanor, but..." 

Worry and an ever deepening despair clouded the corners of both Theodore and Miss Miller's minds. Their very presence in this world was bad enough, with the knowledge that they walked straight into a war, and, as a result, conscription. But to lose someone they both cherished so...A gray ache blanketed their hearts from almost any consideration. 

They nodded blankly and gave no word of protest. Although Winna was appreciative of the seeming cooperation, inside, she quietly suffered with them. She motioned to Nira. "Nira will be my liaison between the Domain Representatives and myself." Then she addressed the assembly directly.

"Please understand that this is all necessary. This war binds us all, high and low. Everyone who can, _must_ contribute to the war effort in some way or none of us will survive. I wish your arrival came under brighter circumstances, I do, but I must command you all to obey my decisions and do everything in your power not to fail me. You may go, and may The Great Green Father bless you with his bounty."

There was nothing more to say from or to anyone. The decree was passed, the decision made, and their lot was cast. 

To live meant to survive. To survive meant a chance to return home. In spite of whatever feelings of fear, turmoil or hopelessness her guests may have harbored, they carefully bowed their heads and turned, quietly following the Domain Representatives and Nira out of the somber throne room and into the war.

A warm, wet breeze stirred her into gradual consciousness. Despite her sore arms, Eleanor used them to sit herself upright while her brain cleared the fog that settled around it. Had she slept or simply fainted, she wasn't sure, but she did know that she couldn't remember much except the horizon spanning before her and the forested terrain speeding underneath her in a green, blue and brown blur.

She blinked open her eyes, trying to take in her surroundings, and realized that she was sitting on a wide, wooden floor in the center of a spacious chamber with a high, domed ceiling that grew darker the further she looked up.

Roots laced the walls and ceiling like veins and a strong, earthy scent hung in the still, heavy air.

To her, the place was somewhat reminiscent of Queen Winna's throne room except that it was physically dimmer, emptier, and, to her intuition's way of reasoning, sinister, unfriendly, unwelcome.

That same intuition made her stare at a noticeably dark area of the room, darker than the rest. She didn't get a good handle on her reason for it, but Eleanor could swear that there was something..._someone_...in those shadows, and it was watching her with quiet, feral intensity.

She slowly stood up, keeping her eyes steadily on the darkness and her ears listening for anything, everything around her.

Then something stirred in her mind that was not her own. A presence of intelligence that pushed its way into her consciousness before she could think to try to and block it out.

__

'I am here, Chipmunk, and I am hungry this day.'

Somehow, Eleanor knew it came from the blackness of where she was staring into, but she forced herself to concentrate on her rising adrenaline and thoughts of escape.

"Hu-Hungry?" she whispered fearfully to nothing she could identify as yet.

__

'Yes,' the thought came to her, scaring her even further because of the swift no-nonsense of the answer after she spoke.

Eleanor backed away, hoping to find any door that led out of this pit. Then the sound came.

A slow, heavy shuffle came from the darkness ahead of her and she stepped away, nearly breathless, at what made the sound.

It was as tall as a medium-sized Human and looked more alien to her than anything in a nightmare. Standing erect, it did so not on legs. Impossibly, it moved at a smooth speed due to a writhing mass of strong roots that flowed and pushed it along the floor with the deliberate grace of a deep sea octopus.

The upper body it supported was more humanoid, but no less strange. The head was slightly large and from the top of it going towards the back, it was shell-like and looked like a partially split seed pod. The wrinkled face had no sensory features, no eyes, nose or lips, and resembled a fresh prune in appearance, with a deep groove running down from the top of the head to where and what its chin would be.

It sported two wooden, thorny arms, sinewy with plant fiber, attached to a broad chest and midsection, also made of plant tissue and wood. On either side of its waist was an almost emaciated, bud-tipped vine, moving as if on its own accord.

In its mottled natural colors of green and brown, it nearly camouflaged with the surrounding gloom and vegetation, but Eleanor could see it well enough as it approached her, trailing dead leaves and thin branches in its shambling wake. 

She risked looking back to wherever she was backing towards. From the corner of her eye, she saw the round door off to the side.

The creature didn't look very fast to Eleanor. In fact, she could now recognize that the earthy scent she had picked up when she awoke was the smell of decomposition, of mulch and dying vegetation. Whatever it was, it was very old and possibly dying in front of her in the dark.

The sudden loud sound of movement made her turn in time to see the plant-creature within an arm's length of her, she could feel the age of it close around her like a iron gauntlet.

Instinct took over for the both of them. For Eleanor, it made her try to leap away to the side, out of the lightning fast clutch of the creature, and run as fast as possible to a door she just realized might have been locked.

For the plant-creature, it allowed it to quickly snatch Eleanor, pinning her arms to her side and holding the struggling, squeaking prey like a rapacious spider. Below her, the thing's two budded vines were snaking up towards her.

In her panic, she looked down at one of them and noticed that one of the buds was opening under her muzzle, producing a fairly large, silky, dim-red flower that gave off a rich, sweet and heady fragrance.

She didn't have long to speculate its use when everything in her immediate view began to blur like a watercolor painting in the rain. 

A dizziness washed over her mind, making it feel like a lead weight in her skull. As much as she wanted to escape, the thought wouldn't come to the fore.

Instead, a deep, overwhelming sense of euphoria cascaded through every part of her being with the chemical strength of a fast-acting drug, stripping her will away, nullifying her 'Fight or Flight' mechanism utterly and slowing her fight to a literal standstill, a vacant, pleased look forming on her face.

The plant-creature released her and moved back a pace, its vines still wriggling, now with more intent.

In the pleasure-fog of her mind, Eleanor heard a command that she could swear sounded like the sweetest plea she had ever heard in her life.

__

'Raise your arm.'

She did as she was told, watching everything that was about to transpire with all the alertness of an addict. In the sweet indifference her condition gave her, there wasn't the slightest danger.

The second bud waved and curled softly around the plump limb and then opened fully. Within its center sat a growth, a small, sharp thorn that, upon very close inspection, sported a hole in the tip that led to a hollow shaft in the thorn's body. Like a hypodermic needle. Like a fang.

The open bud, like a snake, reared up and then rammed hard against Eleanor's arm, driving the thorn-needle deep inside and clamping itself securely to it. Eleanor's expression hardly wavered.

It began to produce a barely audible sucking action where it attached and along its length, it began to get greener.

Indeed, by lengths, the plant-creature's body began to rise from its previous sag, its colors deepening with every moment of its contact to the Chipmunk. Leaves and veins gradually becoming plump with life and its wood grew thicker and glowed with a rich vibrancy. Its "face" was quickly smoothing on the surface and filling out again, now having the appearance of a freshly picked peach in contour, shape and color. Then, it disengaged from her. 

The rejuvenation took all of a few minutes, but to Eleanor, time was immaterial in her paralysis. Any conscious thoughts were buried in the mental murk. Then she was barely aware of herself falling to the floor in a heap.

In the coming headache that rose to meet her, she fought to open her eyes. What little she could see in the room swam lazily in her vision. With the chemical spell wearing off, she wanted to protest, but a low groan was the only response possible. She didn't even want to move.

The creature's thoughts reentered her mind, stronger than before.

__

'You shall sustain me well. I have preyed upon many of your kind for many, many years, despite their efforts to destroy me, but you will have the honor of being the last.'

Although Eleanor could understand clearly, she still couldn't muster anything more coherent than a grunt

__

'What is your name, prey?'

"Eh..Elean...nor. Eleanor Mill...er. Eleanor Miller..."

The creature leaned over and lifted her up with little effort, holding her up in front of it.

__

'Your war will end, Eleanor Miller. My hand shall reach up to the stars and your people's foolish failings will cleanse this world of your kind. Here and in the other.'

She wondered what it meant by _the other_ as she started to come around. The first feeling she wanted to hold on to was defiance. She was still too weak to speak, so she began to concentrate slowly, to the plant-thing's interest. 

Words began to come together in her foggy mind in the form of a loose question. And something else.

Something that felt like a memory, moved ghost-like in Eleanor's consciousness, like a half remembered dream. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she tried to both slow the flash of images down and clear up their meanings.

Momentary flashes of long years in space, being blown hither and yon by the solar winds and tugged along by planetary gravity wells. A strong pull of a planet, a journey over. Unexpected heat...a lessening of itself...then inevitable growth...and complete, unquestionable control of this little land. Chipmunks, a strange threat... 

Snatches of previous feedings, interrogations, commands, the knowledge of a foolish Chipmunk that sought it out so long ago. Found it and incredibly..._escaped!_ The eldritch book of Chipmunks that would tell of their escape from its program of extermination. The fear of that same book...

__

...And a Grand Plan...

Those weren't her memories, she knew, but the snippets of the creature's. The telepathy slightly went both ways. Communication was its main function, she could feel, but stray or surface thoughts could be made out by concentrating on the target's mind in close proximity. A definite advantage to maybe combating this horror.

Eleanor took considerable comfort and strength in that, that and the fact that this thing wasn't quite through with her yet, which gave her time. Time, perhaps to escape, maybe even to destroy that thing. Remembering her defiance, she thought to it.

__

'What do you_ fear, monster?'_

The monster in question gave a shiver in the dark and something akin to a lively chuckle floated in her head.

__

'Fear does not touch me, prey. I am the Doublev _Boskeen, The Splintered One, The Prince of Weeds, and the night that will fall on your people.'_

The Prince then shambled past her and reached the door. With a glance, "he" thought to her, _'Two days more, Eleanor Miller. Two days to completely drain you and become young for another eighty years and two days to win this campaign without question.'_

He opened the door and then left her alone in the darkness, with terribly sore arms and time enough to contemplate her and her people's fate.

The Hall of The Warchanters, cathedral-like and branched with many passages to other satellite chambers, rang beautifully from the clear tones of a small choir practicing during a lull in the operations of the platoon of Autumnal Guard they were attached to.

David, Alvin and Brittany nervously tugged and fidgeted with the collars and sleeves of their Warchanter uniforms, watching the choir sing their songs in perfect pitches and harmonies, as much intrigued by their purpose as they were entertained.

Just about everyone there was dressed in similar fashion to the three newcomers, a honey colored, leather jerkin with a protective skirt covering a green-striped, white shirt and matching hose for the males and an equally patterned and colored body stocking for the females, a deep green glove worn for the right hand, a white one for the left, and a pair of leather boots, also tanned in a rich honey luster.

David glanced over to his son and his girlfriend, noticing again with disdain at the modifications done to their uniforms. Aside from his red cap, Alvin wore his uniform with red accents: a red jerkin with a large, monogrammed, gold-stitched _A_ on its center, red striped shirt and hose underneath and a red glove in place of the standard green one for the right hand.

For Brittany, she went for a similar look, with the same articles of her uniform as Alvin's colored in a soft, yet eye-catching shade of rose-pink. In addition, the legs of her body stocking were adorned with small bows sewn into the stripes that ringed her slim legs.

"There's no reason to abuse their hospitality, you two," David said disapprovingly to them. "You look like a couple of barber poles."

"Who's abusing what, Dave?" Brittany said while taking another admiring look at the cut of the garment she wore. "Besides, this was an improvement, believe you me. Good taste is more than universal, it's trans-dimensional." 

__

"That's true," Alvin agreed. "The least we could do, Dave, is give them a sense of style to their wardrobes. They'll thank us someday."

"Well, let's see about finding this Choirmaster," David said, nonplused, leading them from the main chamber to one of the adjacent corridors that served the hall. "He could tell us what's going on, so maybe we can live long enough for you to be thanked."

The corridor, when they reached it, was a tempest of coordinated chaos. Warchanters, recruits and veterans, walked or skipped by holding alien analogs of more earthly musical instruments or sheet music. 

Songwriters, with quills in their thick-tufted hair, ink stained fingers and dog-eared sheets of paper, were either scribbling last minute notations or lyrics against the walls or on the floor.

The cacophony of instruments tuning up in nearby rooms added to the disorder. A disorder that could be faintly heard past the singing in the main chamber, in the corridors across from it.

For David, Alvin and Brittany, who spent a good part of their lives in music, what they saw looked less like soldiers rushing to their assigned companies and more like backstage at a badly managed, last minute orchestra recital. As one, they squared their collective shoulders and waded into the crowd.

"Ex-Excuse me. Do you know-Excuse me. Do you know where we could find the Choirmaster?" David struggled to ask to any who didn't jostle him and stood still long enough to listen.

"Hey...Hey, pal! The Choirmaster! Have you seen him?" Alvin asked in turn.

"Do you know-Do you know where we can-" Brittany began, but couldn't get any further than that due to the incessant hustle-bustle. "Can you tell-" More motion and even less help met her.

David and Alvin sighed and were preparing to swim back out of the corridor. They and the corridor's denizens hadn't noticed an internally seething Brittany fill her lungs and then explode with an ear-ringing, "HEY!!!" All around her, friend, boyfriend and total stranger alike, turned to her, looking as though they were violently awakened from a trance.

"Choirmaster! Location! Now!" Brittany charged, her hair slightly kinked in anger. Save Alvin and David, everyone pensively pointed down the hallway to the last set of doors there.

"Thanks," said a now cheery Brittany as the crowd resumed its business and David and Alvin stared at her with shock.

"Coming, guys?" she asked.

They nodded and followed. At a respectable distance.

"It would have been worthless," Arthur told the blue Domain Representative simply, in the office of the I.T.O. mobile command center. "The Queen was right to have the work done here, with _our_ labs, instead of with your alchemy and what-not. She expected miracles and you would have had me working with that medieval..._hardware_."

The Representative raised an eyebrow to that, but kept his diplomacy. "I take it that you didn't find our laboratories satisfactory? They are our most advanced in the whole domain."

Simon, who was still getting used to the MunkTech uniform he was given, said to him, "Don't mind him, sir. He tends to get cranky if he hasn't had his afternoon nap." He couldn't believe Jeanette talked him into wearing the thing so soon after she brought it up. It felt a little too tight. Arthur's doing, no doubt, he figured.

Despite the chuckle from Jeanette, clad in similar uniform, and the icy glare from Arthur shot towards Simon, the Representative missed the humor of it completely. "I see. Well, we did have dormitories as well as the laboratories, if he needed a rest. At any rate, I will take my leave of you now. I shall return in two hours to see how far you've progressed. Gentlemunks. Lady." He then stiffly turned and marched past Simon and Jeanette, out of the office.

"Is this really necessary, Arthur?" Simon asked.

"Of course," Arthur replied, leaning back in the leather chair that dominated the room. "Nothing could have been accomplished using their primitive equipment. You, of all people, should have known that."

"No," Simon tried again. "I mean is it necessary for me to wear this?" He tugged at the uniform.

Arthur looked at him with absolutely indifference. "Oh." Then he looked towards Jeanette. "Jeanette wore _her_ uniform with pride on Science Island," he explained.

"That was before I knew the real you," she said with a slight bow his way and a cold smile. "We're only wearing these so that there'll be some peace while we concentrate on our assignment. Understand?"

"I do," Arthur said peaceably, yet, in the back of his mind, the memories haunted him again. Jeanette in her MunkTech uniform, the pleasant times before the truth split them apart..._Simon_.

Simon, who he noticed, was staring at him with ice in his gray eyes.

"I understand, Jeanette," Arthur quickly said again, self-consciously looking away from the two of them and to a lonely pad on the desk, anything to break the tension that caught him off-guard and get him on with the rest of the day. "It doesn't matter, anyway."

"What do you mean?" asked Simon.

"Nothing. Don't trouble yourself."

He looked to Simon, expecting him to put his two cents in, but was only rewarded with Simon standing still, deep in thought, pondering something quickly.

He took a quick glance at Arthur, then said, "Very well, Arthur. I hope your people will have some idea on how to deal with this enemy of ours, but Jeanette and I will still use the facilities here to come up with something in case you don't. Come on, Jeanette."

"Don't hold your breath, Simon. I.T.O. is more than up to the challenge. I just hope you don't slow Jeanette's work down with your bungling," Arthur replied.

Jeanette shrugged at Simon's behavior, enigmatic as it seemed, turned and followed him out of the office.

Arthur relaxed when they left, but still felt the turmoil of having the two of them in his presence, one he loved, one he loathed.

He stood with his back to the doorway and didn't turn when he heard the duet of footsteps behind him. He knew who they were.

"You sent for us?" the first Roaming Eye asked when he and his partner reached the broad, low desk.

"Yes. I will need you to assist in the search for our true weapon. Fortunately, we already know about The Splintered One from I.T.O.'s own stories of him before our ancestors left for Earth." Arthur mused.

From the armored windows, he could see the breadth and width of his father's command. Outside Arbomagnus, the whole of I.T.O.'s military and support was spread out and camped in a clearing.

His gaze covered the vast campsites that sheltered the SecuriMunks and the drivers of the hundred or so P.A.C.'s. The pre-fab research and development centers that neighbored the similarly built security building, machine shops, recreation and living center and the ThunderCannon defense stations that dotted the perimeter. Troop transports, supply trucks and shuttles weaved among the buildings on their assigned paths. The power to hold this world lay before him like a well-oiled machine, or trap, waiting to be set loose.

But not now, not right now. For now, he knew, the priority was on finding the weapon that was told in The Archive. Now that they were here, the search would be all-consuming.

"Yes, sir, that's true," said the first. "The defoliant shielding on the P.A.C.'s and the portable shielding built into our new AirArmor suits was designed to take advantage of the enemy's plant-like nature."

"We knew we'd return one day," said the second. "When the people see I.T.O. crush the armies of The Prince, they'll flock to us by the hundreds of thousands."

Arthur clapped his hands behind him. "Indeed. Their queen will be ill-equipped to counter a coup so soon after the war's end. The process of reconstruction and such should provide the perfect distraction from which to make our move. And since she doesn't know that we already have the perfect weapon against The Prince, we'll go through the motions of helping her while we track down the perfect weapon against the Humans."

"Yes, sir," The Roaming Eyes intoned.

A tone issued from the desktop and Arthur touched a lighted panel on its surface to answer. "Yes?"

"Sir, I think we may have found a lead to finding the weapon," said an anxious voice on the other end. "Could you come over to R and D Bio, sir?"

"Of course. I will be there at once. Thank you."

The message ended and Arthur turned to leave, addressing The Roaming Eyes as he walked towards them.

"Things are proceeding at a faster pace than we knew. The weapon may well be in our hands very, very soon. However, I want you to search for it, too, in case this turns out to be nothing."

The two nodded as he left the office.

Late afternoon. The door to Miss Miller's bedroom opened silently, partially illuminating her and her bed from the corridor lights outside.

Theodore stepped in and walked quietly towards the sleeping form, wishing at his hardest that he wouldn't have to do what he somehow _convinced_ himself to do earlier.

He hated the circumstance he found himself in now, every moment of it. He was a drummer, a singer, an aspiring chef, and a soon-to-be-high school student. Danger was not what he needed, but all he could see was that he was in the middle of some negative example of cause and effect, where anything he did or said could only elicit another unwelcome situation or worse.

No, he realized. Eleanor lost forever at this world's mercy..._that_ was worse.

It was his only walking thought in his quarters after his and Miss Miller's orientation into the world of the healing arts inside The Great Ward. The loss assaulted him, insulted him, even. He couldn't distance himself from what he considered weakness on _his_ part. 

He was there, near her, so close, he could still hear her struggles with the creature, and he still saw her being snatched away like the helpless prey she was. He ran one pattern of attack in his mind after another. He second-guessed himself as though it were second nature to him. Every scenario ended with him feeling the same. Shamed. Impotent. Defeated.

Now he was needed to help the cause. To give Eleanor up for dead and move on in a world not his own and in a war he didn't understand fully.

At that time, in his quarters, he never felt more at a loss for action. He prided himself at times for his almost unflappable optimism, but Theodore felt pretty sure that hoping for the best wouldn't bring Eleanor back.

And hoping for the best and doing anything _other_ than looking for a way to find her was becoming increasingly painful to endure knowingly. Something had to be done, something had to happen.

It would have seemed silly to say that a bracelet told him to try anyway, but when he pulled his gift out of his pocket and looked at it, its meaning changed drastically. 

It no longer became the great milestone in their lives, it became a tombstone, a grave marker, a headstone carved by the iron hands of regret. The regret of never being able to tell her how he felt about her, not now, not ever. She would pass from this world and not carry the sound or the memory of Theodore telling her, simply and directly, that he loved her.

That prompted him to meditate, mull and think deeply about his ultimate decision. The abduction...for some reason he could see it as some random hunt, was the final cause and he made the real and irrevocable choice to become the very real effect. He had to admit, in a perverse sense, that although this was the worse thing to happen from being here, the end result from it, the singular belief that he could save Eleanor, burned him with a fierce, confident and unexpected fire.

It was that resolve, however fatalistically tinged it was, that made it possible for him to pack provisions, clothes, and a map in a shoulder bag and go visit his girlfriend's mother, the only person he felt would understand, so he could speak his peace and make his vow.

He stopped when he came as close as he dared to the bed and looked in on the elder female.

"Eleanor's not dead, Miss Miller," he said shakily, but without a hint of doubt in his voice. "I don't know why I believe it, but I do and you have to, too. She's alive and waiting for us to take her from this place."

He paused when Miss Miller snored softly and turned in his direction.

"I don't care what's going on around here," he continued in a lower whisper. "Dave and the guys wouldn't understand. If I told them what I'm doing, they'd try and stop me. This way, he won't know what I've done until I'm too far away for it to matter. He'll be too busy then. They all will." He leaned over and lightly kissed Miss Miller's now furry forehead. Inside, he could feel the finality of a part of his life and, somewhere even deeper, a commencement.

"I'm gonna find your daughter, Miss Miller, and I'm going to bring her back to you, because-"

He turned quickly to the errant sound near the doorway and could see the flickers of an approaching shadow. He slipped into the deeper shadows of the bedroom and could see that it was one of the co-working nurses of that shift checking in on Miss Miller from the outside and then closing the door.

For a few minutes, he waited until he was sure that the hall would be vacant again, then he strode as confidentially as his heart would allow to the closed door, while trying to maneuver in the darkness.

The door parted again and Theodore risked taking a long look back at Miss Miller while she slept. With a hungry trepidation that was hard to bottle in, he wondered clearly if any of them would ever see each other again, if this war was a bad as claimed. He already doubted that _he_ would. Then he departed.


	8. Chapter Eight

__

Chapter Eight

The huge troop carrac hovered as impossibly still as if it rested on solid earth in the center of the commotion that was the daily business of the hangar bay, one of many such facilities in the military quarter of Arbomagnus.

Amidst the work and noise of the place, Autumnal Guard, a company strong, were filing in tight groups up one gang planked side of the vessel while a fair number of Warchanters and their instruments were being loaded from another, among them were David, Alvin and Brittany.

"What?" David's squeaky question sputtered while they waited to be loaded. "Don't be ridiculous, you two."

"Come on, Dave," Alvin replied in the jocular. "It's like the song says, 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.'"

"You can't be serious. Nira's in love with me?"

"Actually, Dave," Brittany said smugly. "We only told you that she had a _crush _onyou_. However,_ if your heart feels the need to _embellish_ the fact, well, who are we to stop that, hmm?"

David shook his furry head and stared at the massive ship ahead of him, waiting to carry him to whatever fate this new profession entailed. He couldn't honestly say what made him more nervous. That, or the prospect of Nira's affections.

"She has to know that I already have a girlfriend back home, Marsha," he muttered fretfully. "I don't want to string her along like that. When I get some free time from all of this, I'll have to have a talk with her."

Alvin smiled, gave his father a look of world-weary patience and patted his shoulder with masculine camaraderie.

"Why sweat it, Dave? In one world or another, you can't help it if babes fall for you. That's like blaming the candle for the light that attracts the moth." He suddenly stopped for a second, cognizant of the unexpectedly flowery prose he just said. "Hey, I have to remember that one! Anyway, Dave, it's just the ol' Seville magic."

Brittany, who had been quietly listening to all of this, gave out an exasperated sigh. To her, the only thing more universal than good looks was Alvin's cocky trash talk, which ran the spectrum from enamoring to infuriating. She reached over and took Alvin by the arm, pulling him towards the transport as the ship's departure bell sounded above the bay's din.

"Yeah, right, Houdini," she said. "Come on."

"Hold on, guys," David called out. "I'm coming. Let me get my bag."

He reached down to get the duffle he was assigned, which was laden with a few personal effects and survival gear. The crowds of musicians were receding away to the transport briskly and he was about to stand when the sharp click of boots on hardwood from behind alerted him.

"Hello, David."

He knew the voice immediately. "Uh, Nira?" He stood and turned to face her nervously. "Uh, hi, Nira. What can I do for you?" he asked, smiling but anxious.

"I don't want to keep you from the transport," she said, also a little tentative. "I just wanted to see you off and give you this for luck."

She produced a small object from a concealed pocket in her clothes, a braid of her jet-black hair, woven tight, and capped on both ends with a bead of gold.

David took it from her reverently and regretfully feeling the ability to tell her his situation back home slipping from him every second he stood there.

Although he was aware of the time before the transport sailed off without him, he was also trapped in the bubble of the moment, cut off from everything else of consideration.

"And this," she finished, as she reached over and gave him a quick kiss on his soft cheek.

David was hit with a paralysis he never knew. His body didn't freeze into position, it simply couldn't move. His mind couldn't _will_ it to move. He just stared at her, his face a portrait of pleasant surprise, fear and an inner turmoil he couldn't fully reconcile.

"Uh, th-thank you, Nira. I..."

"Dave, come on!" yelled Alvin urgently.

"You're gonna miss the boat! Come on!" Brittany accompanied.

The moment's bubble broke instantly, making David more aware of the time, of his new duty and of his stewardship of Alvin and Brittany.

"I-I'm sorry, Nira. I have to go."

The sadness in her eyes was so easy to read. "I know. Good luck on your journey and may The Great Green Father keep you in his shade."

"Thank you, Nira." he said softly.

David whirled around to run to the now thinning gang plank of Warchanters and didn't see the bay crewmember walking by. Both slammed into each other and fell hard.

After brushing themselves off and standing again, David apologized and flew full tilt towards the boarding ramp. 

As the crewmember walked past Nira, she clearly saw something on the floor ahead of her where David had his accident.

She bent down to pick it up and examined it closely. It was small, squared and slightly thick, completely covered in leather. Judging from the scent, it wasn't from the crewmember. It had to be David's.

On the thought of him, Nira lifted her eyes worryingly to the sound of the immense troop transport backing away from its berth, and, in a manner that looked much too graceful for its bulk, swing about and glide slowly out of the mouth of the hangar and into the unknown of the late afternoon.

Arthur stood among MunkTechs in gleaming white tunics and uniforms as they gathered around a rather clinical looking machine in a bright, clean, steely room full of other clinical looking machines.

The one they stood around consisted of a boxy device with a small glass scanning table built into its side and a large monitor set above it. One of the MunkTechs, the team leader from the colored piping on his tunic, spoke up.

"When the MunkTechs who worked on The Archive found passages alluding to the existence of the weapon ,they discovered a page in the book called, "Vlox's Vision". As you know, sir, Vlox was, by all accounts, the founding father of I.T.O. and his poem gives us the clearest idea of the nature of the weapon."

"How so?" asked Arthur, slightly intrigued.

"Well, sir, the poem goes, 'The weapon sleeps in darkest place, a pit of deepest gloom. When brought to light, your foes, it smites, its seeds, a blossomed doom.' Right below that, on the page, was a spot of dark blue wax." 

He then motioned to the device's scanning table. On its center was a fleck of bluish material.

"To be thorough, we ran the wax through our Omnispecter. This is what we found in it."

The Munktech tapped a button and the monitor came on, focusing on a piece of the material under extremely tight magnification. Within, cells of an unknown type could be discerned easily, since its composition and structure were noticeably different than that of the surrounding wax molecules.

"Although most of what was in the wax was deteriorated by age, enough of it was intact to do tests on it, which led us to what we called you here for." He reached in his breast pocket for a small penlight. "Keep watching the monitor, sir"

Arthur did as asked as the team leader trained the penlight on the wax dot. The monitor grew bright as the light shown on the specimen. On the screen above, Arthur could see, in the illuminated space of the surrounding molecules, the unknown specimen's cells slowly quiver and then, incredibly, expand and grow. Arthur crooked a malevolent smile.

"It's organic," Arthur conjectured.

"Yes, sir, and not only that, it's some type of plant tissue. Its aggressive growth is triggered by light only. My penlight has been modified to emit ultraviolet rays and those rays, or in an extreme case, sunlight, is causing the cells to grow specifically," said the team leader. "We're prepared to search and analyze every plant on the planet for a genetic match. Whatever it is, it's the weapon we're looking for."

Arthur walked off to the side of the room, deep in thought, the MunkTech respectfully silent as he mused. Then he turned to them again.

"Research Vlox and find out where he lived on EverSpring before he and the others left for Earth. If his home isn't there anymore, comb the natural features of his home village and the surrounding area. It's a hunch, but it might prove to be a good one."

The MunkTechs looked faintly skeptically, but nodded and gave their obeisance.

He could see their questions in their faces. "There is a method to the madness, people. Vlox may have found the weapon and discovered its properties to kill non-Chipmunk life and then wrote the fact as a simple poem to hide it from The First Author of The Archive. The wax must have acted as both a preservative and protection from the light."

"That could be, sir," the team leader said, brightening. "How did you come by this?"

Arthur slowly walked to the doorway, preparing to leave. "Simple," he shrugged. "Vlox founded the Iron Tree Organization. He's also my ancestor. It's what _I_ would have done if I were him. Carry on, people." 

When The Prince had left from the door of the humid, dark room that would become her prison, Eleanor hadn't paid much attention to the light and sounds of birds, leaves and wind that came in from the opening then.

Now, as the scuttling, semi-sentient flower bud carrying her tray of mashed fruit opened the door, Eleanor thrust the back of her hand against her eyes, becoming very aware of the near-blinding rays of sun that made a painful haze in her dark-accustomed vision. She luxuriated in the cool breeze that took the warm blanket of warmer air from her temporarily and she could detect the slight tang of ozone in the wind. _'Rain?' _she wondered.

Blinking away the spots from her eyes and focusing in the creature, she took several steps from it as it approached on its root tentacles, using a set of them to place the tray by her feet.

Although she had every right to be suspicious of foul play from her captor, the sweet, rich scent that roiled up from the bowl to her nostrils made the meal all the more appealing, especially since she was both hungry and slightly weak from blood loss, courtesy of the vampiric Prince. Apparently it was time to feed his little cow before the next withdrawal, so it wasn't likely he would poison her. She took another look at the flower servant.

__

'Okay, Ellie,' she thought as she stooped down to take the bowl off the tray and quietly picked the tray up. _'This thing's pretty small and I don't think he locked the door behind him. I'll just whack him and make a break for it.' _

Eleanor raised the tray as she sneakily closed in on the now returning flower-servant, its supposed "back" to her and her attack.

Then it stopped, aiming its fat, closed flower-bud up at her, the sealed petals opening at the ends just slightly.

Time seemed to stop, but somehow Eleanor reacted, just bringing the tray up to her face and closing her eyes in hope.

When she reluctantly opened them again, she could see the woody tip of a thorn the length and thickness of a Human index finger, punched through the center of the tray.

She slowly looked around the side of the make-shift shield at the creature, bewildered.

"Don't tell me," she joked shakily, her heart hammering from the close call. "Eyes in the back of your head, huh?" The plant-thing continued to the door, the portal opening on its own as soon as it was a few feet from it.

Eleanor glanced up from pulling the thorn free from the tray to watch the doorway. Since the door didn't need to be opened any wider than needed to allow the for the flower-servant, she could just make out the nature of the sunlight, which, she noticed, was more diffuse and dimmed that a sunny day could be considered.

The few broad leaves and creepers that peeked through the threshold while the door opened, suggested that the doorway, if not the whole prison cell facade, was not only out of doors, but overgrown with vegetation. Then the room was brought back into the gloom again as the door closed.

She sat down and made herself more comfortable on the floor and began to dig into her repast, literally bringing whole handfuls of the crude jam into her mouth.

"Bon appetite, Ellie," she gripped to herself quietly. "At least if Theodore were here, the food would be better."

Then a thought from the past made her laugh in the dark. "Unless it was rutabaga pie. He _hates_ that," she chuckled. Then she sobered when she realized what she was doing. Holding on to every memory of what came foremost in her mind. Theodore. She needed to think of him, to use him as the life preserver in her troubled sea. Her light in this dark place.

"Oh, Theodore," she sighed despondently, trying to maintain her flagging good cheer when her last thought of him, fighting off the fern-flyers that took her, came unexpectedly. 

Then it hit her like cold water, she had to escape. She knew her family and friends wouldn't give up on her. Theodore, especially, she made herself believe firmly, but they wouldn't know the first place to look. She had to make effort to free herself, or, at the very least, let others know where she was. Skulking in the dark would be suicidal.

"I've got to get out of here," Eleanor resolved. "That's all there is to it. They'll never know where I am if I don't to do something."

Picking up the tray and walking up to the door quietly, Eleanor, more out of wishful thinking than out of any real concrete plan, reached the door and began pushing at it experimentally.

Gently at first, but soon with stronger shoves, she was hoping to push it open and make a mad dash out with the tray, ready to wallop any guard too slow to react. Whatever happened next, it wouldn't be stealthy.

She took a breath and mentally prepared herself for whatever worst-case scenario would arise. Then she held on to the doorknob and rammed the door with all her strength.

With a shock, she found the door swing out freely from the threshold, completely unlocked as she desperately hoped. Her eyes closed to the momentary flash of an errant stroke of lightning and wind-whipped rain in her face.

And the sickening sensation of the earth swooping away from under her feet that made her heart and stomach lurch up in her body with frightening force. The reaction made her eyes snap open and the sight made a scream fly from her throat in pure terror.

Hanging on with every intent she could muster, one-handed, by the rain slicked, jam-covered doorknob, Eleanor could watch the space of one hundred feet yawn between her and the seemingly endless jungle canopy far, far below.

The view ahead and above proved no less disheartening. Swaying in the growing tempest's cold wind, like a parody of trees, stood a loose group of wide, single-door wooden domes, each one supported by a strong, relatively slender pillar, all of them covered in vines and foliage.

Painfully craning her neck up to see, Eleanor could see from her lowered vantage point outside, the same architecture and support beam of her own prison gently moving to and fro to the winds.

Turning her head again in a wild-eyed stare, Eleanor learned the truth of her surroundings. So high was she, the whole turbulent vista stretched out before her water-logged gaze. In the green distance, to what she could discern where jungle land may have terminated, was ocean, leaden and choppy.

There was nothing beyond the iron seas she could identify, no other lands or cities, and although the storm hadn't really cut loose with stronger torrents of rain just yet, its angry skies covered her and everything else below in an overcast as thick as a blanket.

Where was she? An island? Some private coastline on the continent that sheltered Arbomagnus? She couldn't think.

Until she felt the horrible slip of her fingers across the wet doorknob and her body starting to sway stiffly in time with the door being blown back and forth in the storm.

Raw self preservation over rid her already overpowering fear and she clumsily swung about, slowly reaching out, fumbling in the rain, and finally finding a struggling purchase for her other hand to the doorknob.

__

'No wonder they hadn't locked the door,' she thought ruefully. _'They probably never did. How could you escape? Fly? The plants must climb up and down the support beam to deal with prisoners.'_

The wind buffeted the door in the direction of the threshold after a few moments in the other direction, so Eleanor prepared to gather herself in a pull-up that she hoped would get one or both of her feet back up into the doorway.

She took a strengthening breath while feeling her fingers lose more of their grip. Very little time left. 

Her eyes opened in the rain to see yet another disheartening sight. Off to the side of the doorway, crouched like a floral spider, yet completely a part of the look of the vegetation that grew around the little prison cell, the flower-servant aimed its petal bulb down at her. It clearly was reacting to this chance escape attempt and there was no way it could miss perforating her with its projectile thorns now.

A fact Eleanor was hit hard with. Her arms shook with the strain of holding herself up for so long by such a slippery object as she began to weigh which was the least painful of deaths, falling to her death, or having a nearly three inch shaft of wood driven into her body somewhere vital and _then_ falling to her death.

Gravity ultimately made the decision for her. She couldn't maintain the hold any longer. 

The dart-like thorn sailed and impaled the door just where Eleanor's head was a moment before. The flower-servant wordlessly watched Eleanor tumble swiftly away in the storm, her body now too far for its senses to detect, her sorrowful scream lost in the roaring wind and the celestial drum of the thunderclap.

For the tenth time since he left the massive protection of Arbomagnus, Theodore wondered if he was doing the right thing. Probably not, in the grand scheme of things.

Due to the sheer size of Arbomagnus, when he risked a look back to it, only half its canopy was visible on the horizon. He was quite a distance from it and any consideration to recanting his choice, he figured.

He closed his eyes and tried to stop his hyperventilation and flip-flopping stomach. Although he was comfortably seated in the creaking wagon that went along the well-worn road, he felt like he was in a plane that was about to crash.

"You're lucky I was going by," said the wagoneer, an aging male Chipmunk whose work clothes spoke of a lifetime of hard work. "There's a town in the same direction as where you said those fern-flyers flew towards. I've got to say that you've got some dangerous hobby trying to study those foul things."

Theodore opened his eyes and looked away slightly, feeling a bit uncomfortable lying to this kindly 'munk and at the same time thinking up more of the lie.

"Well, the more information I can get on them, the better our chances at beating them. Like one of my brothers always said, 'Knowledge is power'." Then he punctuated it with a nervous chuckle that hinted at the stress he was trying to beat back.

"Well, you know your business, I suppose, but it still isn't a good idea tracking something that could snatch you up like a caught fish and whisk you away to who-knows-where. Right, Pella?" the wagoneer said and then smiled at something up ahead. 

Theodore followed the smile to the docile-looking, humpbacked, claw-footed beast of burden pulling them at a measured pace. A low, musical rumble from the creature answered back.

"That's my girl," the wagoneer chuckled.

Theodore went on to ask, "What's that?" He pointed to Pella.

Pella's owner seemed a little taken aback from that.

"Wha? You've never seen a choreen before? What do they teach you in school these days?"

"Oh, uh, the, uh, usual," Theodore stammered slightly, hoping not to offend. To change the subject, he asked in modest conversational tones, "How long before we reach that town?"

"Don't worry, son. You'll make it, we're almost there," the elder 'munk sighed, giving the weathered reins a snap for more speed. "I need to get indoors, anyways. The sun'll go down soon."

"What'll happen then?"

"Thorn soldiers," the wagoneer said grimly. "Sometimes people see them during the day, but they like to hit us at night most times. Well, them and the bandits." 

__

'First fern-flyers, now these Thorn Soldiers and bandits coming out of the woodwork, as well,' Theodore fretted internally. _'More things to make this...interesting.' _He closed his eyes again, trying to relax and calm his mental seas, which were churned by his growing misgivings.

"There it is," Theodore heard the wagoneer say. He reopened his eyes to see a wood-trimmed stone wall curved slightly around for thousands of yards in either direction.

The road had now branched off into a smaller road that led to a small, fortified portal and guard station built into the side of huge wall.

They rode as far as the guard station, then stopped. The wagoneer reached in the top of his worn tunic and pulled out a medallion held on a length of strong twine.

He held it up to the guard on duty, who visually inspected it and then went deeper into his station for a moment. A moment later, the reinforced doors parted.

The wonder Theodore felt as he took in the sights of the walled town dispelled some of the self-doubt and worry that persisted to nag at him. Everywhere he looked he could see the long history and quaint atmosphere of the place.

Small shops and homes were built into the heart of large trees, similar in appearance and style to his mother's and The Chipettes' homes on Earth, and arranged in orderly rows as a type of city planning.

Children ran happily among adults busy with their living and livelihoods. Vendors and shop keeps beckoned to any who passed too close and looked too burdened with money.

"Where can I go for information?" Theodore asked while he gawked at everything at once.

"The way I see it, the best place for news, rumors and gossip would be The Broken Bough," said the wagoneer as he steering into the direction of a section of the town where the population became somewhere sparser. "These barrels of Nutwine are for there. I know the bar keep personally. I'll introduce you to him."

"Thank you, sir."

It was after a few minutes traveling that Theodore noticed a change in the surroundings. Several large specimens of trees sported more than one home. Each dwelling was placed in a staggered arrangement, going up along the trunk in a type apartment style that was curious in its own right. However, these examples were rundown, showing visible signs of wear and decrepitude. Somehow, dilapidation had set it.

The trees themselves that supported them, despite their tremendous sizes and age, looked ill-maintained, near-black with burgeoning disease and thinly canopied. These, Theodore surmised, were the slums.

The wagon cruised among Chipmunks of either sex that sported a harder edge on their faces than the ones Theodore had previously seen.

Eventually, the wagon came to a stop at the rear of a wide, squat tree that had a tavern built into it a ground level.

"Here we are, son," the wagoneer replied as he stepped off briskly and wrapped his choreen's reins around a nearby hitching post. "Let's go in."

Theodore stepped down, clutching his shoulder bag close, not wanting to have it taken in some sudden, Fagin-like fashion. Around here, he could feel, anything might happen, both around him and more distressingly, _to_ him. Hence, his worrisome stare at the rear entrance. What was beyond that portal?

Watching the porters file out to handle the barrels, Theodore followed the wagoneer through the doorway.

From the storeroom in the rear of the building, Theodore could hear the weighty sound of talk, laughter and drink, underscored by the jaunty, light airs of simple music.

He took a nervous breath and then he paused at the closed door leading into the back of the bar. It seemed so unreal to him. He opened the door.

It was a scene from every swashbuckling movie he had ever remembered seeing. The dim, primitively rustic atmosphere. The strategically placed crys-lamp lighting that gave enough illumination to see, but also granted enough shadow for dangers and intrigues to take root and flourish unnoticed.

The patronage, too, was just as he pictured it. Cute and not-so-cute serving girls slalomed around tables and booths, taking orders and either accepting or trying to avoid the occasional pinch or pat.

The tables, booths and the far, dark corners of the place were populated by an assortment of types. Hard drinking, no-nonsense males and females eyed everyone, keeping one visible hand on their drinks and a lower slung one on their hilts. Desperate youths hung close to the bar, either trying to find their fortunes or trying to escape their pasts, and the smattering of youthful, long-stocking-ed strumpets, sweet-eyed, comely and perfume-nosed, but just as rapacious as sharks, glided in their territories throughout the tavern.

Theodore felt that if he could look into their minds, he'd find stories as diverse, dark and exciting, as any Dumas, Sabatini or MacDonald story. This was a world all its own, with its own laws and punishments, pleasures and taboos, diplomacies and betrayals. If any of them had ways of dealing with the outside world, that was fine enough with them, but in here it was different. This was tavern life.

"What are you doing back here?" shouted the barmunk, a pudgy male with a handlebar moustache, wearing a stained apron over an even more stained tunic.

Theodore was snapped out of his reverie and stammered to give an answer. "Uh, um, uh, I..."

"Danaan, you old nut hoarder! How are you?"

Theodore noticed that the barmunk was not addressing him just now, but to someone behind him and to the side. He glanced over and saw the gruff wagoneer looking at the barmunk with a jovial air.

Oh, I'm fine enough, Pent. Just wanted to introduce you to, uh..." He turned to the teen. "What did you say your name was again?"

"Theodore."

"Theodore," the wagoneer finished.

Pent the barmunk gave the youth a critical eye. "Theodore...hmm, sounds like one of those names from the 'munks from the southern islands."

"Uh, yes, it is. I came a long way," Theodore agreed, hoping that would stop the barmunk's sudden scrutiny.

The wagoneeer, Danaan, gave Theodore a comforting slap to the back, which almost knocked his shoulder out of alignment.

"Aww, let the boy be, Pent. He came here for some information. Figured you'd be the one to point him the right direction."

Pent leaned against the counter and looked slyly at the two of them. "Depends." He regarded Theodore. "What does he want to know about?"

"Fern-flyers," Theodore said simply.

Pent gave a strong chuckle from that. "What's to know, boy? They swoop and fly for The Prince. They're plants, y'know?" 

Theodore's mind clicked at that. "Prince? Who's The Prince?"

"Ha! I knew you were from the islands," Pent scoffed. "They always were a bit behind the times. _The Prince. _The Prince of Weeds, boy. The one who started this blasted war with us since before my great-great grandmother had her first litter. The fern-flyers and the Thorn Soldiers and who knows what else, are at his beck and call."

"Why?"

"Cause he made them, lad, to carry out his dirty business of hunting us down, rounding us up and doing away with us. It's a hard time for us right now."

Theodore took a seat on a nearby stool. "What about Queen Winna and her people?"

Pent sighed. "She and the others do what they can, Green Father, bless her, but The Autumnal Guard can't be everywhere at once. Towns like ours have to look after ourselves."

"I see," Theodore admitted. He was learning a lot, but he needed to know about Eleanor's possible condition. So it was with obvious hesitation that he asked, "Um, do those fern-flyers, uh, always eat who they catch?"

Pent seemed to ponder that for a moment, then said, "I'd have to say not always. I knew of someone who told me that flyers just take Chipmunks to The Prince's island and then they're never seen again. Why the interest in fern-flyers, anyway?"

"Oh, I'm just studying them so we can win the war a little sooner, that's all," Theodore replied while glancing out to the rest of the tavern and its motley crew of patrons. Worry for Eleanor painted an anxious picture on his face.

"Want a drink?"

"Huh?" Theodore said, waking from the lapse in attention.

"You look kind of down," the barmunk offered. "Sort of get your mind off of fern-flyers for awhile. So, what'll it be?"

Theodore suddenly remembered where he was and hopped off the stool. "Oh, wait. Let me get over here first." He opened the small door built in the far end of the counter, went around to the front of the bar and took an empty stool. Facing Pent, he then said, "_Now_, I'm a customer." 

"Okay," Pent said with professional courtesy. "What can I get for you, sir?"

"Uh, do you have any fruit juice?"

Pent gave a skeptical smile. "I've got fruit juices, all right," he said, gesturing at the shelves of various and exotic wines. "But they may be a bit strong for you." 

He stooped under the counter for a second or two and then arose with a bottle of clear pink liquid. Upon its opening, Theodore caught the scent of peaches.

"This is the safest drink I've got here. Sun's Hill Berry juice. Try that on for size," Pent said.

Theodore took a tentative sip. It was sweet and mellow, but no different from any of the other juices he grew up with. With that, he drank more, listening to the social cacophony and music all around him. He felt excited to be so immersed in this culture, even if it were temporary. Whatever these people did with their lives, good or ill, they were still _his_ people. His link.

The band on the low stage was dispersing for a break and one of them, a gangly, low-keyed male leaned on the counter next to Theodore and ordered an ale.

The musician wearily placed his string instrument on the counter and drank deeply, while Theodore studied it with casual interest.

"Nice, huh?" the musician asked.

"Yeah!" Theodore piped up. "Is that a violin?"

"Violin? Never heard of it, friend. This is a laversy, hand-made and makes the sweetest sounds you've ever heard."

"May I?" Theodore asked, gesturing to the instrument. The musician nodded.

Theodore studied it more appraisingly. "I'm kind of a musician myself, back home. Do you mind if I give it a try?"

The musician gave him a dubious look, obviously fearing for the laversy, but something in him wanted to trust a fellow music maker. One of his peers would certainly treat any instrument with the utmost care.

"Alright, but be careful. That's my livelihood you'll be playing with," he said evenly.

Apart from some surface tapering and cosmetic elements, it looked very much like a standard violin. Theodore cradled the laversy in violin fashion and picked up the curved bow that rested next to it on the counter.

People close by began to hear him play the scales to get a feel for the instrument and slowly started turning their attention towards the stranger.

"What are you going to play?" a female asked.

The attention made Theodore a bit self-conscious. He remembered wistfully that he hadn't picked up a violin and played it since his elementary school days, but the prospect of entertaining the folks was beginning to take his mind off of the war. Eleanor, he'd _never _forsake, but a calmer head was far better for finding her than a hot and bothered one.

"Maybe...maybe something I heard in Ireland once or twice," he told her. He put bow to string and the area nearest him quieted.

The melody was spry, rising and falling in notes like the steps of the jigs that it inspired. Because the song was so lively, Theodore had to stay on top of it the whole way, his concentration demonstrated by the practiced blur of his fingerings upon the taut strings.

After a few minutes, most of the patrons listening knew how the light-hearted, repetitive melody went and were tapping their mugs on the tables, stomping their feet and clapping hands in time to the music. Others were just content to listen, like the elderly male who sat in a booth in a dim, distant part of the tavern, watching everything from his vantage point. The tip of his weapon, a spear, caught any appreciable light from the area and gave a menacing glow.

The other members of the band joined in, making the impromptu jam complete. Soon the makings of a party could be felt and for a second, a loose second, Theodore forgot about his mission, forgot about Eleanor in the revelry.

And then remembered just as quickly when the void in his mind concerning her was discovered. 

Theodore turned in the direction of the band and gave them a sharp nod, telling them to finish the song soon with him. At that, the music repeated the last part of the melody one more time and then finished with a joyous flourish.

In the midst of applause, backslaps and the exuberant handshake of the laversy's owner after he returned his instrument, Theodore excused himself, saying he was getting some air and would return in a few minutes.

Theodore felt elated as he left the tavern and took in a lungful of late afternoon air. He had surprised himself in there with his little virtuoso and it felt good to know that his talents weren't diminished from the stress of his arrival to this world.

He took a stretch and strolled along the front of the tavern. _'Independence sure feels good,' _he thought. _'The hardest thing will just be getting Eleanor back. I can handle my punishment later on.' _

Then he felt surprised again. He never was one to be blasé about pending punishments but now that he could feel himself on the move, taking action and being responsible for everything he did and said, he could hear himself sounding like Alvin quite easily and understand his brother's bravado firsthand now.

He craned his head to what sounded like a scuffle coming from nearby. He would have stopped at the sounds and seriously debate with himself about the need to get involved, but when he stopped to hear, he found that he was in the very line of sight of the phantom fracas.

Off to the side, in the shadow of the tavern, in full view of each other, Theodore saw three males, teens not much older than he, cornering a graying male who was holding a spear in his hand with a loose yet confident grip and a quick eye.

One of the teens was favoring his forearm, his club lying by his feet. The other two noticed Theodore staring blankly at them, stuck in mid-decision, then they turned back to the older 'munk.

The adult Chipmunk began to back away towards the rear of the tavern while still facing his attackers, oblivious to the club wielding youths who crept forward as he retreated with weapon raised.

The reaction was immediate. One moment, Theodore was frozen in indecision. His 'Fight or Flight' mechanism setting every second to 'Flight', the next, a warning rose from the depths of his gut at the sight of the coming ambush.

"Behind you!"

The old 'munk didn't even turn to the attacker, but simply pivoted to the side and lashed out with a thrusting kick that propelled his younger opponent back at a humbling distance.

When he looked back to his earlier foes, they were gone. He found them where he wished they weren't, congregating around Theodore, one with a blade flashing close to his exposed throat.

The adult dipped his spear low in a wary submission posture, his eyes never straying from them for the sake of his momentary savior.

Theodore couldn't breathe and a bitter tang painted his dry cheek pouches and tongue. He kept asking himself why. Why did he leave the safety of his family and friends so soon? Why did Eleanor have to be taken from him? Why did he fall in love with her so hard that he wound up being captured by club and knifepoint in his search for her?

What he feared, as much as his apparently pending death, was the growing spirit of failure that closed its numbing hand around his banging heart. He would not _live_ to find Eleanor, alive or otherwise.

His concern then turned in the direction of the old Chipmunk with the gleaming spear. The old 'munk's concern mirrored his for the space of a few heartbeats. Within that time, although they never met before and, as it looked, they would never know each other in life, both were brothers-in-arms.

Something in Theodore flared again to rebellious life with a need to once again warn this supposed innocent, when the opponent the elder adult brought down with a kick, brought his club crashing down hard to the back of the older Chipmunk's skull from behind.

He felt for him as the oldster collapsed alongside his weapon and lay still. Then, his captors chose that moment to laugh conspiratorially amongst themselves, making Theodore even more uneasy, if such a thing were possible. The dancing blade near him was enough. 

The blade started to glint in the sunlight, then glow, almost hypnotically, in Theodore's eyes. It quickly multiplied into three blades, wavering and blurring, and the laughing became distant and more and more muted, like the sounds of a departed dream.

As the pain and nerve-jangling shock of the club's strike on the base of Theodore's skull spread throughout his brain, worry about failing Eleanor flickered, weakened and soon faded with the light.


	9. Chapter Nine

__

Chapter Nine

"She's waking up..."

The words came as a distant buzz, more noticed than heard to Eleanor. Her brain told her to flutter her eyes open and, upon doing so, she realized she was still among the living.

She couldn't recall feeling any impact after that headlong tumble she took in the rain, couldn't remember that she finally stopped screaming somewhere before the end of her fall.

She took a moment to try to focus in on her surroundings. Drawing another deep breath, she tried again, with better results.

The room was dark, punctuated in spots with dim light from thin torches. It was wooden and very spartan, with orderly piles of dying, drying grass on the floor for beds and gourds or various sizes, shapes and makeshift functions, gathered in an illuminated corner.

Eleanor caught sight of a figure's near-silhouette moving towards her. Even in her weakened state, she could feel the adrenal rush of caution.

Upon second examination, the figure appeared diminutive, even to Eleanor. Then an odor struck her immediately. A scent like wet, cut grass that forced her to stop smelling so deeply, lest she get a headache for her troubles. After all she had been through previously, Eleanor could recognize the aroma of chlorophyll by now.

The figure's face looked inquisitively close to Eleanor's and Eleanor could finally see that it was the visage of a young Chipmunk girl.

The girl's face was noticeably painted with dark plant sap in wide, crude patterns, her hair was matted down with the same. Her exposed hands, arms, legs and feet were also splotched deep with the substance, caking in her fur. Even the ragged, paltry dress she wore was stained and saturated in sap, answering Eleanor's curiosity as to the origins of the smell and adding to the pungent, earthly scents in the air.

Eleanor felt the light pressure of small fingers stroking and massaging along her forehead and cheeks. The skin of her pelt felt something cool ooze its way past the hairs of her short coat and the scent of the chlorophyll grew stronger.

"Wha...What..." was all Eleanor could say to the unexpected face painting.

"Don't wash it off," the girl said calmly while she worked with a practiced hand. " They can't smell you with the sap on. You'll smell like them and they won't hurt you."

Eleanor began to focus. "They? The plant-creatures? How long have I been here? Where _is_ here?" 

From a lit corner of the room, Eleanor spotted a second figure, a youth, male, mixing a liquid in a bowl made from a gourd half. He tilted his head from his task to regard Eleanor in a convivial manner.

"Doom Island. At least, that's what our parents called this place before they disappeared," he explained.

"Do you know what happened to them?" Eleanor asked, sitting upright on her grass bed and hoping dearly that sap can be washed out of hair as the girl began working it deep into her blond strands from the gourd-bottle she had nearby.

Even in the low light, Eleanor could see the pain in his face. "No. They told us to stay here while they and the rest of the adults that escaped tried to find a way off the island," the boy said. He stopped stirring and walked over to her, carrying the gourd bowl. "Drink this. You'll feel better."

Eleanor settled into her drink, which was a fruit pulp concoction, and relaxed visibly. "Thank you. My name is Eleanor."

"Mine's Farrlan," the boy chirped in his pre-teen voice. "That's my baby sister, Pris."

"Hi!" the girl perked up as if meeting Eleanor for the first time.

"Hello, there," Eleanor replied with a smile. "How did you two find me?"

"We heard something moving through the trees pretty fast during that rainstorm a while ago," explained Farrlan, sitting cross-legged next to Eleanor's bed. "We couldn't go out until the rain stopped or it would wash off the sap, so when it finally stopped, we went out and saw you hanging in the vines outside our tree. You were pretty lucky."

Eleanor looked introspectively at that good fortune. "Yes, I was. Thank you both very much. I didn't think I was going to make from that prison up there. Are we in a tree?"

"Yep," said Pris, now working on Eleanor's arms. "Our parents left us here and we've been calling it home for a while now." Then she suddenly became somber. "They're not coming back though."

"I'm sorry, Pris," Eleanor commiserated to her and her brother. "It's this war. It's these plant-things. It's...crazy. It shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen to _you_, most of all. We lost too much already. With me and Theodore..."

She stopped just short of revealing more than was important or relevant to that moment and to them. But seeing another set of orphans made so by so dire a circumstance, made her remember what she was losing or may have already lost, due to both this wretched Prince and I.T.O.. They didn't deserve this, she felt, and if Fate put her where she was now, to see that they escape this viper's nest of an island, then she, in all good conscience, could not abandon them. If it was the only thing she could on that world, she would see them safe among their people.

"I'm sorry," she resumed. "How long have you been here?"

"I guess about a few weeks," said Farrlan. "We were all taken from our village of Fall Berry and then put on a large boat, I think."

"Yeah," added Pris, smearing more sap on her Eleanor's back. "Then we were taken to this really old and scary-looking tree somewhere on the island. It was huge. Just as big as Arbomagnus."

"What happened next?" Eleanor asked.

"Well, they put the kids in one big room and the adults in another, but then our parents and some adults cut up some of the plant-guards with some knives that they had hidden in their clothes and got us out before we were put in the room with the other kids," Pris said.

"The plant-guards' sap got all over the adults and when the plant-guards got back up to fight, it looked like they couldn't see the adults at all. But they could see _us_, though," said Farrlan. "The guards went for us, but they were cut down again by our parents, who figured out that the sap that covered them, made them invisible to the plant-creatures. They covered us with some of the sap and then we all snuck out of the giant tree."

"That's when they left you here? To look for a way to rescue the others?" Eleanor asked.

"Yeah," Farrlan replied, crestfallen. "They haven't come back after that. We've been holding on since."

Letting out a breath she just noticed holding, Eleanor slowly stood up and stretched, feeling her muscle strain warmly and her bones creak and pop with renewed movement. When she turned to face them again, her eyes shone with a determined light.

"I'm not going to let you die here," she said simply.

"What are you going to do, Eleanor?" Farrlan asked, concerned with what he and his sister were seeing in the older girl's manner.

She turned towards the opening in the side of the room that was the only entrance and exit of the children's home and listened to the alien birds that called to each other in the boughs and the leaves that whispered in the mild, wet breezes.

"I'm going to finish what your parents started, you guys," Eleanor said, her heart finding every scrap of reason to do this. Her family. Her friends. Her people. _Theodore... _So many reasons.

"I'm taking you home."

The carrac transport had become a fat dot in the noonday sky. To every soldier and singer who disembarked from the large flying ship with the choreen-drawn wagons bearing the Autumnal Guards' and the Warchanter Corps' provisions, it was a troubling turn of affairs. Primarily because they all were marching down a road that threaded a sparse chain of hamlets and cut through and cornered the coastal highlands two miles from wherever their destination happened to be.

The Warchanters, flanking behind the Guard like a mummer's parade, looked visually out of place alongside the more military, hard-edged soldiers and officers astride their armored war choreens.

Alvin and Brittany, in particular, seemed to stand out among even their Warchanter compatriots in their red and pink uniform variants as they marched protectively near David, who was dutifully keeping pace with the rest of the group.

Alvin was carrying a lyre-like instrument, plucking its strings to tune it on the march and appraising it and the situation with a sour, critical eye. Every time he looked at his instrument, called a gallyr, he felt a pang of misplaced guilt, as though he stole it from some museum of ancient musicology. He was used to far more advanced musical equipment. 

He tried to put his situation in the same perspective as going to summer camp, with the hiking and possible singing, the great, if somewhat unfamiliar outdoors, and the camping and camaraderie. However, he, and he could safely assume, everyone else around him, was fairly sure that the fact that he was marching to fight and possible die was the one hiccup in an otherwise interesting outing. 

"Boy, is _this _retro," Alvin griped, having a hard time listening to the strings change pitch to his tuning amidst the sounds of the march. "If this axe were any more Stone Age, it would be..._an axe_!" Glancing over to some Warchanters that quizzically heard him and were marching nearby, he said, "I'll say this, you guys take being unplugged waaay too seriously."

"Tell me about it," Brittany chimed in, brushing off the occasional dust that settled on her jerkin or stockings, dulling the colors. "I'm a singer. I'm a performer. I should be _entertaining_ the troops, not marching right next to them in This 'Munk's Army." She began to fix her hair, more to keep her mind off of the moment than when the odd strand fell out place, which was becoming more commonplace as the march progressed. "It's bad enough being drafted and then having to ride in that flying Noah's Ark of a ship, but now, I'll be expected to sing without so much as a sound check or a dressing room. How barbaric."

The Choirmaster in charge of the Warchanter group there, was moving among his charge, maintaining their part of the procession and watching for trouble, when he appeared next to Alvin, possibly in response to Alvin's and Brittany's opinion-making. 

Alvin, not noticing him, put his arm chummily around the shoulder of the closest Warchanter, who clearly thought that this youth was both troublesome and quite odd, and said mock-conspiratorially, "You know, she right. I mean, back where we come from, I was a star. People couldn't get enough of me." He then added as an afterthought, "Oh, and my brothers, too. I mean, like, hey, pal, how much are you guys getting paid for this because I would seriously review my contract when this is all over."

"We work with the military, young 'munk," the officious voice of the Choirmaster said from behind him. Alvin glanced at him and saw how the Chipmunk unabashedly looked down his muzzle at him. At that moment, Alvin knew he didn't like him.

Brittany quickly stepped in deftly when she saw the silent challenges being given between the two of them. "Working with the military, huh? I guess it's cheaper than booking a band," she quipped in her best Groucho Marx, drawing some of The Choirmaster's ire to her.

The Choirmaster looked over to David, clearly flustered. "Master Seville, would you kindly keep your children in line? The three of you have been given your assigned song sheets earlier today. I trust that you've memorized them in practice." He then stiffened with an air of pride that looked as rehearsed as it looked exaggerated. "We must all serve with our voices, with the utmost conviction."

David slowed down and went over to the two teens. "Okay, you two, settle down," he told them with well-worn patience. Looking over to the Choirmaster, he added, "Don't worry, sir. We're all professionals here. We can even handle last-minute song changes. That happens all the time where we come from-"

"Master Seville," the Choirmaster interjected, with such undisguised condescension that it oozed from every word like raw tar from the ground. "I have already been told of you and your children's exploits from the other world. Please do keep in mind that this not your..._Earth.._.and this is not some village minstrel review. This is an arm of the military. Outside of your abilities to sing and/or play music, your acumen will not be needed. That is why _I _am here."

Then the Choirmaster, without another word on the subject, turned heal and marched off to oversee another area of his group, leaving David, Alvin and Brittany feeling like they had just been trampled by every foot in the march.

"Sure. Sorry," David said in a hurt, angry tone, more to himself than to the officious snob who he knew wasn't listening.

"'This an arm of the military,'" Brittany mocked snidely.

"Yeah?" Alvin said to his father. "He keeps talking to you like that and I'll break _his _arm."

"That's okay, you two," said David. Although he, himself, would love nothing better that to see that stuff shirt get his comeuppance, fighting or ill will in the ranks wasn't going to see them through this. They had to keep it _and_ themselves together. Soon, there wouldn't be enough free time.

He took out some of the song sheets from the pouch he wore on his shoulder that all singers were given on the field and read through them with an experienced eye. "Let's just concentrate on our jobs while we're here. Hmm, I've been going over these songs and they're not that bad."

"Spoken like a true manager, Dave," said Brittany with a wan, sarcastic smile. 

"You plan on representing the Warchanters as the next hot group?" added Alvin. 

David held up his hands in a mock-halting manner. "Oh, no. Being manager of the two of you is plenty on my plate, thanks, but I can see where you get your musical talent from. It comes pretty easy with Chipmunks."

Alvin puffed his chest out and seemed to carry himself with an even cockier air than usual. "Well, yeah, it's true. We do have the gift of music in us." He then glanced competitively over to Brittany and said, "Some more than others."

Brittany, catching both the glance and the challenge, didn't miss a beat as she laughed it off with practiced _noblesse oblige._ "Now, Alvin, let's not go there. Too many painful memories. For _you_, that is. After the spanking you got from me and the girls in Greece, I'm surprised you'd want another in front of these good people here. You've got _enough_ to worry about."

Alvin was not outdone. He simply favored her his own easy, dismissive chuckle and parried. "Surely you jest, Miss Amateur Hour. It was me and my brothers who had to reacquaint you three to the fine art of rockin' that time." He then smiled and stopped to think of something he had just said. "Amateur Hour. That's a good one."

"_Ham-ateur _Hour, you mean. Don't you know that behind every great Chipmunk is an even better _Chipette_?" Brittany scoffed.

"Yeah. _Way _behind." he countered.

"Jerk!" she hissed.

"Brat!" he shouted.

"Wannabe!" 

"No-talent!"

"Toad!"

"Slug!

"Okay, you two!" David chirped, exasperated as he got between the two of them and wondered if maybe marching up ahead with the military wouldn't be more peaceful.

Up ahead of the Autumnal Guards' part of the processional, which preceded the Warchanters, the commanding officer of the company, a bearded male with a paunch that his uniform and armor hid as well as could expected to, scanned the surrounding hills beyond the road they traveled atop his war choreen. His combination spyglass/compass revealed no surprise ambushes from plant life with sinister natures as he ran both ETA's and tactics in his head. The fact that the last village they past was still inhabited by Chipmunks and not ransacked so close to where they were going, relieved him deeply.

He didn't turn and he didn't lower his telescope until he addressed the maker of the sound of clawed choreen feet behind him and to the side. "How are the knights, Tirran?" he asked.

Tirran, the second-in-command, rode his choreen to the side of his commander and blew out a sigh that sounded more frustrated than sympathetic as he reported. "As well as to be expected, considering you ordered the carrac crew to drop us off in the middle of nowhere, Commander Noven."

"Mm-huh," intoned Noven, seemingly distracted by some momentary calculation is his mind. Then he asked in a private voice, "Think we should have stayed on board until it dropped us off at our destination, Tirran?"

"Begging your pardon, sir, but why _are_ we here?" Tirran asked, trying not to carry his voice to the other officers and soldiers behind them and trying not to sound as insubordinate as he was starting to fear. "I wasn't told much about this before we left and I figured you'd tell me when you felt it was the right time."

Noven looked ahead, to the road and what was probably waiting for them. He no longer looked as though he were in the middle of something. He just felt tired and, yes, he would admit it, worried somewhat.

"Yes, I know. It was all very last-minute. I debated with myself whether to tell you on board the ship or out here in the field. Now is a good enough time, I believe," he said evenly.

His second-in-command felt slightly pensive over that admission. Whatever it was, it must have been a grave matter for his commander not to apprise him of it sooner. "What is it, sir? What's going on?"

The company commander turned around and looked at both Guardsmunks and Warchanters for a solemn moment, then turned back to speak to Tirran.

"We need the stealth of ground movement to aid us," Noven said, matter-of-factly.

"Sir?"

"There is a reason a large force like ours is out here now," the commander explained. "We have to reestablish control of an abandoned outpost in a critically strategic location near here, bolster our defenses _from_ there and wait for forces from I.T.O. to come and reinforce us before the enemy can strike decisively."

"Then I suppose our using the reserve troops is out of the question?"

Noven gave a wan smile. "I'm afraid so, Tirran. We have to fortify our positions out there with what forces we can free up for it."

"Very well, sir," Tirran conceded thoughtfully. "But why to an outpost, away from the more populated areas like Arbomagnus or Blessed Bough? From what I've heard, that's where the bulk of our forces are being stationed."

"Because we need those soldiers to be there if we fail to slow down, weaken or outright stop the enemy out here on the periphery. We're the first line of defense for our people now, thanks to the Prince."

Tirran looked quizzical. "Sir?"

"Our spies tell us that the Prince's forces have been steadily weakening our defensive positions out here by taking out our outposts farthest away from Arbomagnus and the rest of the interior of the country. The coastal outpost we're heading towards was hit recently and our spies say that no other outposts have been attacked after that one," Noven related to him.

The look on Tirran's face seemed to tell his commander that the implications came upon him like a smothering shroud. "Then...if there's a lull in the attacks, it could mean that the enemy is ready for a massive offensive soon."

"Correct," Noven said, sounding more like an instructor than a commander. "If this is so, then judging from where all the outposts were attacked, the push could very well come from the coast, maybe even where _we'll_ be when we reach our outpost."

Feeling as though he officially knew far too much for his own good, Tirran sighed again. "You know, sir, we could have just flown there directly in the carrac transport," he said glumly.

"True, but I didn't want to take a chance of us being caught by any Fern-flyer ambushes on route so close to the sites of the attacks," Noven said. "We're vulnerable in the air. Down here, with our strength of numbers, we can defend ourselves better while we travel overland."

"I understand, sir. Shall I tell the Warchanters to sing us a marching song to pick our pace up a bit?"

Noven glanced back at all the souls he commanded with a sober eye and told Tirran, "Not yet. I'll have to address everyone on this mission first."

"Sir, maybe we shouldn't tell them anything just yet," Tirran fretted. Though he believed that the Chipmunks under Noven's command were capable, seasoned and patriotic enough, he was also pragmatic enough to see scenarios ranging from low morale to panic attacks to mutinous, even murderous, desertion run through his mind, too. "Until we've arrived at the outpost, at least. No sense in making them anxious and all."

Noven seemed to consider, then said, "No. They all swore an oath of service and defense for our people. I can't spare their feelings when they have their duty to perform, and I wouldn't be fair to them if I didn't tell them why we all may shed blood this day." 

"I-Yes, sir. I understand," the second-in-command said to him, the weight of that honorable, martial logic wrapping around his heart and mind like the armor he was clad in.

Noven healed his choreen around to face the march and raised his hand, signaling them all to stop. As one, the entire crowd's attention focused on him, curious as to the unexpected halt.

"Soldiers and singers, I have to relate to you now the nature of this mission and where we are ultimately going," Noven said in a high yet commanding voice. "We have been left here on purpose to travel overland to an outpost to take over its operation and prepare for a possible offensive by the Prince's armies. I.T.O.'s SecuriMunk forces will rendezvous with us soon after we establish command of the base and help us in the battle, so we won't be alone out there."

The consternation was expected, but he continued, determined to finish quickly so as to resume the march. Time was flowing away from them all, the schedule was already tight.

"All right, people. Form up and let's move out!" Noven then turned back to the road ahead and began to ride on slowly without another word.

"Warchanters!" Tirran called out towards the rear. "A song to raise our feet and our spirits, please? We have far to go."

"Aye, sir!" the Choirmaster called back. He then turned to the musicians and singers as the Guard began to pull away from them in degrees to follow their commander.

"I guess we're on," said Alvin as he and Brittany ran the songs they learned in their heads. And again, the Choirmaster appeared behind them.

"Indeed you are. The both of you," he said with an obvious plan in mind.

"What?" Alvin, Brittany and David said in unison.

"Oh, yes, Master Seville." he said. "Since young master Alvin and Miss Brittany are such wonderful singers in their world, then they could certainly grace our poor group with their talents. Or, at the very least, give the Guard a good laugh to lighten their spirits. What say you?"

David could see that although his son and Brittany were momentarily taken aback by this new arrangement, he knew that they were just what he said earlier, professionals. And this could be the perfect way to take the wind out of the sails of the Choirmaster but good.

David turned to Alvin and Brittany, gave a deeply confident grin that clearly shown his new rodent dental work, and said to them, "Blow 'em away, guys."

"All right!" chirped Brittany as she and Alvin trotted off to the head of the Warchanters group and engaged in a quick discussion over song choice.

After a few moments, Alvin turned to the rest of the Warchanters, the Choirmaster, in particular, and declared, "Where Peaceful Waters Flow, okay? Hit it!"

Then Alvin and Brittany began to follow the Autumnal Guard, the swell of the musicians freeing a slow, steady, upbeat melody from their instruments which, the two had to admit, sounded much fuller and richer in their compatriots' practiced hands.

Singers and musicians alike began to walk in time to the beat behind the two teens as the parade of Guardsmunks and Warchanters marched by a small hamlet, its inhabitants enjoying the proud sight of their defenders walking by as much as they were enjoying the song and music that floated clearly in their wake.

Alvin:

Restless hearts, it has been a long time,

Out here on the journey, for a glimpse of paradise,

Brittany:

It's getting hard to find a place to go,

Alvin and Brittany:

Where peaceful waters flow;

Brittany:

I took a walk past the old Saxon well,

Down by the cathedral I heard the chapel bell,

And joined the people singing for a way to go,

Where peaceful waters flow;

Alvin, David and The Warchanters (Chorus):

And if you don't know by now, you'll never will,

Brittany (Chorus):

Only love can find the door,

Alvin, David and The Warchanters (Chorus):

If you can see it now, it's in your hands,

Brittany (Chorus):

Only love can reach the shore to Heaven,

Alvin:(Glancing at Brittany)

Always, she is standing by my side,

She's my inspiration, and she's my battle cry,

And in her arms is the only place I know,

Where peaceful waters flow;

Brittany, David and The Warchanters (Chorus):

And if you don't know by now, you'll never will,

Alvin (Chorus):

Only love can find the door,

Brittany, David and The Warchanters (Chorus):

If you can see it now, it's in your hands,

Alvin (Chorus):

Only love can reach the shore, forevermore,

Alvin, Brittany, David and The Warchanters (Chorus):

Where peaceful waters flow...

Alvin and Brittany:

Doo-do-do-do (8x)

(Simultaneously)

David and The Warchanters:

Ahhhhhhh...ah-ah...ah-_ahhhhh-ah_ (8x)

The parade of soldier and singer eventually began to recede in the dusty distance, the strains of the happy music and song continuing to echo away like the end of a pleasant dream, until the road was, at last, silent and lonely once again. 

It made Alvin, Brittany, David, the other Warchanters, and, yes, even the stuffy Choirmaster, glow from within to know that they, in their own way, contributed the war effort. Igniting the passions of patriots, weaving the warm threads of love and home, and, for the villagers they passed, perhaps never even to be heard from again, a brief stroke of hope and light that colored every heart it touched in these uncertain days ahead.


	10. Chapter Ten

__

Chapter Ten

"He's waking up..."

Theodore didn't make out what was being said as his consciousness flew up and out of the shadows of his stupor. His foggy vision saw a lit haze populated by gray blobs that passed his view.

Then the breath-taking sensation of chilling water crashing upon his head brought the world into painfully sharp focus.

"Wha-What? What?" he sputtered wetly as he shot upright into sitting position on a beaded divan that looked too expensive for the surroundings Theodore saw as he regained his composure with a wide-eyed wheeze.

"He's awake now," came a voice from somewhere above him to the chorus of laughter.

Theodore wiped his face and scanned the room. From the carved walls and high, ringed ceiling, he knew he was in a rather large tree of sorts. Visits to his mother's arboreal home on Earth convinced him of that, but the comfortable atmosphere of a near-hollowed heartwood was the only similarity for him.

Like the tavern he was in before, it had a history that felt palatable, an air and a life of its own. Judging from the decor he was seeing, that really didn't seem _like_ decor, if his brother Simon were with him, he would have classified the place as piratical.

Essentially the room was a spacious, circular pit, dug from root level, that, from the amount of frilled pillows, beaded cushions, ottomans and the one divan he sat in, was used to entertain the occupants. Its curved walls and floor were made of packed earth and built into one of the walls ahead of him was a tunnel that led underground. 

Brass-like furnishings and knick-knacks clashed haphazardly with wooden furniture that came from two camps: cheaply made affairs and stolen, hand-crafted pieces more deserving to be called works of art than stylish household items.

Large crys-lamps were set against the walls, adding their light to the gaudy crystalline chandelier set in the center of the ringed ceiling above.

Looking up past the glare of all of their light, Theodore could see that the entire entertainment pit was ringed on its edge above by an equally wide, wooden, circular walkway, carved from the interior base of the tree, that doubled as a balcony for looking down into the pit. The walkway was done up as gallery where the occasional, crookedly-hung painting was displayed on its curved walls.

Also carved into the wooden walls were three large portals. One opened from the main hallway that led from the tree's main entrance to the walkway inside and lined up with a small set of steps that led from the walkway down to the pit. The second and third portals led to ascending stairways on either side of the room that wound through the tree centrifugally from the center of the tree, where the room was located.

The occupants of the tree also had a distinct look about them. All teens, male and female, they wore clothes of various styles of their own making, giving them the collective look of youthful, land-locked pirates, brigands and slightly armed strumpets.

They lounged about in the pit, pointing at Theodore and whispering amongst themselves jovially, or, like the owner of the voice that Theodore heard after his dowsing, mingling up on the walkway.

"What's going on? Where am I?" Theodore asked.

"The happiest place in all of EverSpring, believe it or not," came the voice Theodore recognized hearing seconds after his dousing.

Wiping the wet fur from his eyes, he braved a look up and could see, flanked on either side by his peers on the balcony above him, a male teen of bulky build and of sly sneer looking down at him both literally and figuratively.

"Huh?" Theodore was having a hard time deciphering that, considering the condition he currently found himself in.

The burly teen waved Theodore's confusion away dismissively. "I wouldn't worry about it, Chubby. You're pretty lucky you were partnered with that old Chipmunk we caught. Figured we could collect a little something extra with the bounty on his head by bringing you in alive, too."

"Bounty?" Now Theodore was totally confused. "What are you talking about? Where is he? What did you do to him? He didn't do anything to you."

The teen walked his way calmly down the stairs to where Theodore sat, followed by a smattering of his entourage. Theodore warily watched him take a seat across from the divan he sat upon. He didn't need some latent instinct to know that he didn't trust or like him.

Leaning back, smiling, with large arms crossed, the teen said, " He did something to _someone_, that's why he's wanted, or rather, _was_ wanted. Yeah, you two are going to make me a very rich Chipmunk."

One of his compatriots standing near the teen's seat, voiced, "Hey, what about us? We deserve something for helping you bring the old 'munk down."

The teen looked up to the other and Theodore could see some of the teen's obviously false good-nature melt a little. The slick venom of the bully seasoning his words to his friend and, in fact, any and all within earshot.

"What? You don't think I could have brought him in by myself?"

His friend, in turn, didn't change expression, but his voice did waver in an almost imperceptible plaintive. "Well?"

"Don't fret," the teen sighed. "The bounty's so big, there'll be nice, fat cuts for each of you." He then turned his attention back to Theodore. "And as for your partner, he's safe in our little dungeon for now."

Despite his situation, Theodore was beginning to tire of this mistaken identity rap. The longer he bandied with this thug, the worse Eleanor's problem's would be, and he realized that he was thinking as positively as he could if he was thinking that his girlfriend was alive to have problems to begin with.

"But he's not my partner. I don't even know him personally. I just saw him in trouble and helped out. You guys ganged up on him. It wasn't like he had an army behind him, y'know?"

The teen seemed unfazed by the admission. "Believe me, in his day, it might have taken an army to bring him down. We were just being cautious. That leaves only you. There's no room in the dungeon with the old one in there so I'll keep you and him separated so you two can't come up with an escape plan.

"But I'm telling you, I don't know him."

With that, the teen stood up to almost tower over the sitting Theodore. It was the grin he gave Theodore that made the captive worry the most.

"Well, I hope you're tell me a lie, because if that's true, you're worthless to me." The clean dagger he slowly, playfully pulled from a concealed part of his clothes put a point to his warning. "And I do hate holding on to worthless things."

Theodore gulped dryly as his stomach knotted. 'Worse and worse,' he thought. Then he heard a voice from above them all.

"Oh, I don't know, Lerk. You don't follow my orders that often, but I hold on to _you_ pretty much."

Raucous laughter from both sexes in the room followed that comment as Theodore looked up cautiously to prepare himself for his next potentially dangerous acquaintance. He was intrigued by what he saw.

She was small in build, about Theodore's height, and dressed in the same style as the others. A thick, long braid of brown hair cabled from her head down to the small of her back.

He had almost made the mistake of mentally grouping her with the other lounging or carousing females in the room when he noticed that the big fellow, Lerk, looked a little humbled by the exchange and that everyone else laughed, a good number of them quicker than most. 

Combined with her confident stance and her jovial, yet predatory smile, Theodore reasoned that she could have been their leader.

'She must be as dangerous as botulism to be in charge of all these guys,' Theodore assessed.

"How are ya?" the female called down to him. "Are ya all right? Can ya stand any?"

"Yes," he said uneasily. She seemed to sense his wariness all to well.

"We're The War Orphans!" she announced with a measured pride. "Kelyn at your service."

"Theodore Seville," he greeted back. "How do you do?"

She brightened at that and her smile became incredulous. "Well, I do all right for myself, thank you! Aren't ya just the proper little lord in our den of bandits."

After the light chorus of chuckles that that elicited, she said to him, "Don't let Lerk rattle ya, friend." She descended to where Lerk still moodily sat and gave him an affectionate hug. "He may be a bit money-hungry an' rough, but it so hard to find a boyfriend who's also you're second-in-command. That's rare, y'know?" A peck on the cheek from her lightened Lerk's sulk.

"Can you steal at least?" he asked Theodore curmudgeonly.

Theodore felt it was a fair enough question. "I'm afraid I don't. Besides, it's wrong, anyway."

Lerk's disgust was apparent enough without him having to say, "He's as bad as that self-righteous Autumnal Guard. Don't steal? Pheh!"

"That's all right, anyways," Kelyn defended. "We've more than enough thieves, but good musicians are pretty hard to come by."

"Huh?" Theodore asked her.

"I was in the tavern listening to ya before Lerk and his bunch jumped ya. Yer pretty good with that laversy. Ya sound like a skilled journeymunk. It would be nice to have some one around who can play like that. What do ya say? It's not like ya got anywhere to go and sure beats being taken to Don't Return Forest."

"Don't Return Forest?" Theodore asked her suspiciously.

"Yeah," she said so matter-of-factly. "You're taken to the forest, the things in there grab ya and probably eat ya, and then ya _don't return_."

"Who says there's no truth in advertising?" muttered Theodore under his breath.

"Say something?" Kelyn asked.

"No. Nothing," Theodore lied.

Kelyn shrugged it away. "So, do you want to join up, Theodore?"

Theodore hesitated visibly. He couldn't stay with these cut throats while Eleanor was wherever she was, possibly suffering and needing him badly. He glanced slightly at Lerk. However, he had to stay alive to save her eventually, too. This circumstance was a terrible delay, but he might be able to slip away once he allayed their suspicions and lulled them into false security. Now he knew what Simon would mean by a calculated risk.

"I...I suppose I could," Theodore said at last.

With that, Lerk stood up quickly with a joyful eagerness that looked somewhat out of place with his rough bearing. "Great, I'll get ready then." Then he trotted up to the balcony and out through the path that led to the tree's main entrance, followed by a number of his companions and their girlfriends. With a sudden cheer, others were getting from their seats to follow Lerk as well, an anticipatory air was charged about them.

"Get ready for what?" Theodore asked Kelyn, watching the pit empty out.

"For the challenge you offered."

Theodore felt like he had been dropped on his head. "What?! What challenge?"

"When you said you'd join us," Kelyn explained easily. "Everyone has to prove their worth here and Lerk's the one ya have to beat to get in. You'll do fine. I got faith in ya."

"Well, I've got _blood _in _me_, and I'd like to keep it there," Theodore countered.

All that elicited was a full laugh from her. "You're a right riot, ya are. Ya make me laugh, so's ya got my vote. C'mon, day's a-wasting."

Despite the thumping he knew was sure to come, Theodore's stomach didn't flip-flop as much as he feared it might, and instead growled low. _How long since I ate?_ he wondered. _This topsy-turvy world's got me forgetting even the most basic of needs_.

"Well, could I maybe get a little something to eat first?" he asked. "I'd hate to get beat up on a empty stomach."

Kelyn smiled and made a gesture towards the tunnel entrance ahead of them. "Of course. The kitchen's in the back of the hall, there, but don't take too long now."

Theodore slowly got up from the divan and shuffled in the direction of the tunnel with the look of the condemned.

"Sure," he said dejectedly. "No sense being late to my own funeral."

__

'I didn't think it was universal,' Theodore thought as he reluctantly approached the high mound of brown earth. A throng of Chipmunks surrounded both the base of the mound and him to keep Theodore from escaping and to garner a good view of the scene that was about to play out.

The sounds of a heavy scuffle drew Theodore's attention up the mound to the summit. There, Lerk and another male his build and size, were wrestling.

One swift and unexpected leverage move from Lerk and his opponent began to slide and then tumble unceremoniously over the side, his speedy descent tearing clumps of dirt free to rain down over Theodore and those closest to him.

Theodore shook the dirt from his hair as the vanquished 'munk rolled into a heap by his feet. Feeling for him, he asked the male, "What happened?"

"I was practice." the male croaked.

Two Chipmunks from the crowd helped the loser to his feet and walked him out of the area. Looking up the slope again, Theodore could see Lerk looking down at him, eager to embarrass, eager to bruise.

Lerk looked out at the audience ringing the hill of dirt he stood atop.

"That was just an appetizer, folks," he crowed. "Are you ready to see this dumpling roll down my hill? Just say, 'Aye' !"

A stirring collective "Aye!" sang from all around Theodore and rose up the sides of the hill as the crowd began to close around the base of the mound and force Theodore to reach the base of the mound and climb.

"Climb...climb...climb!" the multitude chanted as Theodore looked back at the wall of bodies that confirmed that he was effectively trapped. With a sigh of resignation, he slowly clawed his way higher up the slope, keeping his eye on Lerk all the while.

__

'Bullies are universal, too, it seems,' Theodore mused nervously, debating on whether his height up the makeshift mountain or the prospect of dealing with Lerk provided the most tension for him.

As he ascended the slope, ignoring the taunts from above and the cheers and jeers from below, Theodore's vision caught the sun, high in its path of the day.

__

Time.

A new, fresh knot of anxiety threaded its way through his gut as Eleanor's plight reasserted itself in his heart. Time was his enemy and he chided himself bitterly at wasting so much of it on this pointless alpha-male nonsense. He was clearly aware that he was trying to save himself through ingratiation, at the expense of precious time that could have been better spent in search of her. He was dooming her through inaction.

"Taking a rest, are we?" came Lerk's voice from above him.

The words snapped Theodore from his self-imposed funk. He flashed his green eyes open, only realizing that beforehand, they were clamped shut in frustration, and earth was squeezed from his clenched fists.

"I don't have time for this," Theodore muttered to himself reprovingly.

Hearing him, Lerk taunted, "Then let me speed you on your way, then!" He shifted his stance on the mound and lashed his free foot out towards Theodore's head in a debilitating kick.

It missed narrowly as Theodore ducked his head flinchingly down. Then Theodore crab-walked as fast as he could in the crumbling dirt as Lerk risked losing his perch in the summit by stomping at him. The jeers and whoops below, rising at a matching pitch to the action.

It didn't take Theodore long to realize that he was actually safer where he was in relation to Lerk, who was starting to do some actual damage to the mound with his increasingly frustrated stomps at his head.

__

'He'll have to come down here to me,' Theodore surmised, his momentarily free hand patting his pants pocket. Despite the occasional shout that he climb up to Lerk and fight him off, Theodore ignored it and clumsily maintained his position just below Lerk and just out of reach. 

"Coward!" Lerk growled laboriously, feeling his credibility slip away from his peers with each minute he didn't dispatch Theodore to the ground. "I thought you wanted to join our gang. You'll have to bring me down if you want to be in, and that's not going to happen, Chubby."

"Well," Theodore retorted in a tiring huff, "You haven't brought me down yet."

In the back of Lerk's mind, he knew that Theodore had to have had a plan by now to keep a safe distance from him and still be virtually close enough to out flank him if he decided to quickly climb to the peak and maybe rush him over the side. That _could _happen if he allowed it by tiring himself by stomping at the lower and more defensive youth.

But he also knew that he was much stronger than his current opponent.

In a flash that startled Theodore inwardly, Lerk let himself slide from the summit. Breaking to a slowing halt with his fingers and feet, he reached Theodore's level and shot a fumbling, free hand out to snatch Theodore by the side and fling him from the mound.

With a squeak of fright, Theodore clawed the wall of earth, scuttling away from Lerk in a rapid, dirt-covered panic as the cheers below rose higher in pitch and intensity.

Like the crowds below, Lerk had to marvel at how fast a chubby, little fellow like him could move when the situation warranted. Already, Theodore was almost around the other side of the mound, but Lerk was gaining with every foot and hand-hold.

__

'His arm...his sleeve,' Lerk thought rapaciously, his fingers almost touching them by an inch or two into his climb. _'You can't outrun me, Chubby. One grab and you're done for.'_

Theodore spidered another foot, then looked up. The thought struck him. The top was empty, he could reach it if he hurried.

He slowed his sideways crawl and tensed his legs for the climb upwards. His arm furthest out stretched up and clawed a hand-hold, his furthest leg cocking upward for an equal purchase. He began to pull himself higher from his position when he was caught like a vise on his other arm.

Theodore glanced over worriedly at the clutched fist that promised to stay attached to his sleeve permanently, or at least until it and the arm it belonged to whipped him down from his spot onto the ground. He could see Lerk's eyes spark with a dark triumph as he pulled himself closer to Theodore. 

Theodore tried to pull against him, fighting as best he could against his now rising anxiety, but not only could he not get any further away or above him, fighting against Lerk's hold caused Theodore's feet to dig deeper into the soil, causing him to slide further down inch by inch.

"I can't believe I had to come down here and chase after you," Lerk sneered happily as he shifted his weight and stance to snatch Theodore off the mound. "I have to say that I never had to come down from my place in the sky to knock someone down before. You'll actually be the first."

Theodore's grip to the mound was lessening by the second, the fingers getting pulled out of the earth and the feet sliding more and more out of their holds. 

"Wa-Wait a minute, Lerk!" Theodore yelled as his side furthest from Lerk lost all connection with the mound's side and swung out suddenly. "It's just a game, right?!"

"Well, in that case," Lerk said with undisguised glee, "The game is up!"

Theodore's freed hand tried to find its way back to the mound, but while he struggled to keep his balance, it slapped against his pants pocket. Then he finally felt hopeful.

Lerk chuckled and jerked his grasping arm hard to dislodge Theodore off completely. The last sight he saw, incredibly, was Theodore reaching for something in a pocket that was hidden from Lerk's view and then a white, round ball of something with a spicy scent fly into his face. Pain was the next thing that he found.

His hand came away in a hurry and went straight for his eyes, trying to rub, brush and outright dig out the substance that made his eyes feel as though they were on fire, which only increased the agony. What he inhaled took the breath from his lungs and made him hack in wet, violent gasps.

Theodore turned his head in time to avoid the red-tinted cloud, though he could still smell the pungency of it. He twisted himself so he could better clutch the mound's side again and began to climb, not looking back at the coughing Lerk.

When he decide to wrap up and keep a little of the peppery spice from the kitchen he had come from to use on any food he might come across on his travels while looking for Eleanor, he hadn't thought it would come in so handy so soon. Although he belatedly knew he was just being desperate when he used it.

Something in him made him look down to Lerk in concern. He didn't wish him harm, but he did need to win. Lerk, gagging, kneaded the dirt painfully. Any invectives he spluttered at Theodore were barely intelligible as he writhed more and more into losing his balance and his opponent resumed he climb to the top.

Soon Theodore could feel the earth end into the crude plateau of the top of the mound and he carefully crawled over it and then sat up. The view was rewarding enough. Although he could just see over the roofs of the nearest ground-level homes and a fair length of the abandoned village, he felt a sense of pride through his exhaustion and jitters.

Below him, the portions of the crowd that were pro-Lerk, yelled their disapproval, disdain and dismissal of Lerk as the object of their jeers, after rubbing the spice into his eyes one time too many and doubling over in torment, finally lost his footing and rolled, tumbled and slid into a dirty, pained heap at the foot of the little mountain, wailing about needing water. Pro-Theodore factions pounded shoulders with one another and cheered, collecting small winnings from the bets they made from the Pro-Lerks. 

Lerk was helped up by some of his entourage and given a jug of cool water to pour over his face, while in his mind, he reviewed his notions about this Theodore. He was unassuming, but evidently ruthless when he needed to be, he pondered. No wonder the old 'munk was willing to have him around when he was ambushed. Theodore was probably his junior partner or maybe a squire to pass along his deadly legacy. 

Lerk decided to let the loss pass. He respected Theodore's plan to beat him in that manner, for it was what he would have done, himself. But if he could let him get away with the win, he also knew he'd have to keep a sharp eye on Theodore as well. Cunning like the young Chipmunk's could win sudden allegiances, power, loves and lusts. Things that defined what he, Lerk, loved best in life and what he had been defending for as long as he was a gang member, through his own ruthless and sometimes cunning action.

Unnoticed by the cheers of the crowd, the refreshing gurgle of the water rinsing his eyes clean and the scheming turmoil in his mind, Lerk hadn't noticed, some distance away from it all, Kelyn watching Theodore's victory with an very appraising eye.


End file.
